Doctor Who_ Terminus Part 1

DOCTOR WHO.

TERMINUS.

JOHN LYDECKER.

Tegan was sure that there must be something to like about Turlough, but she couldn't think what. It wasn't his age, it wasn't his looks it wasn't anything that she could name, but as they walked down the TARDIS corridor his presence behind her gave Tegan a creepy feeling between the shoulders. It was like stories she'd heard of travellers back home in the Australian bush; they'd get the same crawling sensation and look down to see a snake about to strike.

'These are all storerooms,' she said, gesturing at a set of doors she was certain she'd never seen before, and she carried on past before Turlough could ask any awkward questions. Just give him the tour, Tegan Just give him the tour, Tegan, the Doctor had said, you know your way around by now you know your way around by now, and she was left in the position of either tackling the job or else arguing for her own incompetence which she wasn't going to do, not in front of the Brat. Her a.s.sessment of Turlough was such that she'd trust him to store up the admission and use it to embarra.s.s her sometime. It was about the only only thing she'd trust him for. thing she'd trust him for.

At the next intersection, she stopped and glanced back. Turlough was looking the doors over as if he was weighing up whether or not to believe her. In the cool grey light of the timeless corridors he looked serene, almost angelic, but when he caught her eye and smiled there was a glint of something hard and unpleasant under the surface. If the Doctor looked for long enough, he'd probably see it as well... but then he'd never had reason to, and on the couple of occasions when she and Nyssa had tried to describe their doubts he'd dismissed them. Reservations about a new companion in the TARDIS could so easily look like a display of petty jealousy; and when the Doctor was around, Turlough's act was very, very good.

He sauntered along slowly to catch up, and Tegan turned the corner. She saw with relief that, at last, they were coming into an area she recognised. Not only was so much of the TARDIS unfamiliar, she was convinced that parts of the craft quietly redesigned themselves when no one was looking.

Through this open area and out the other side, and they'd come to the corridor with the main living areas.

She slowed, so that Turlough could make up the distance. He didn't hurry. Something else that had unsettled her; Turlough was no primitive, but there had been nothing in his background to prepare him for the intellectual and sensual shock of entering a craft containing the floorplan of a mansion in an external package the size of an old-earth police telephone box. So why was he taking it all so calmly?

'Well,' she said as they reached the living s.p.a.ce, 'that's the layout.' She tried not to sound too relieved at making it back.

'It goes on forever,' Turlough said politely, as if he was thanking an aunt for a present ( but he ought to be but he ought to be standing there with his mouth hanging open and his mind standing there with his mouth hanging open and his mind completely blown completely blown, Tegan thought).

'It can seem like it,' she said. 'It's best if you don't go wandering until you know your way around.'

'How am I supposed to manage?'

'Give me a call.' That's a joke That's a joke, she thought, and pointed across the corridor to the door of the room that she shared with Nyssa. 'Most of the time I'll be over there.'

'Don't I get a room?'

'I was coming to that next.'

Well, to be honest, she'd been putting it off for as long as she could. She led him down to another of the doors and touched for it to open. 'This one... isn't being used,' she said delicately.

Turlough went through and stood in the middle of the room, looking around. Tegan hesitated for a moment before she followed. This was Adric's old room. Nothing inside had been touched or moved since they'd lost him. She could understand that it was only fair to let Turlough have somewhere that was within easy distance of the console room and the social areas, but why did it have to be here here?

She knew the answer, of course; that the pain was a necessary part of the healing. But it didn't make her feel any better.

'It looks like a kid's room,' Turlough said.

Tegan did her best to keep the anger out of her voice. She almost succeeded. 'It was Adric's.'

'Who?'

'It doesn't matter. But he wasn't a child.'

Turlough barely seemed to have noticed. 'I've had enough of children,' he said, 'what with that awful school on Earth.'

She relented a little. Maybe the Doctor was right, and she simply wasn't giving him a chance. She said, 'You can change things around to suit yourself.'

He picked up an interlocking mathematical puzzle from the desk, inspected it, and tossed it back. It rolled and landed on a heap of notes and charts. 'All this can go, for a start,' he said, and then he looked up and smiled. Practising for the Doctor. 'That's not unreasonable, is it?'

'Do what you like,' Tegan said stiffly. 'It's your place.' And she turned and walked out.

When she was back in the corridor, she had to stop and take a deep breath. Steady, now, girl, don't let him get to you. That's how he works he'll needle away until you explode, and then he'll stand there in complete innocence while you make a fool of yourself.

But why? We've taken him in, sheltered him... why isn't it enough?

She stood under the corridor lights and listened to the even heartbeat of the TARDIS all around her. It was a good trick for getting calm. Tegan got half-way there, deciding it was the best she was going to manage, and went through to join Nyssa in their shared room.

'He's got the manners of a pig,' she said.

Nyssa looked up from her work, surprised. 'The Doctor?'

'The brat! I had to show him all around the TARDIS. You'd think he was going to buy it.'

'Perhaps he'll settle down,' Nyssa suggested, but Tegan wasn't about to be rea.s.sured.

'You know he threatened me?' she said.

Nyssa laid aside the abacus that she'd been using to check over some data. 'Seriously?'

'It seemed serious enough at the time.'

'Why?'

'I found him playing around with a roundel. He tried to laugh it off, but he's up to something.'

'Have you told the Doctor?'

'Not yet.' And perhaps not ever, if Turlough managed to keep the Doctor convinced with his pretence of innocence.

Nyssa pushed herself back from the bench. Most of its surface was taken up with the intricate gla.s.sware tangle of a biochemical experiment, like a funfair modelled in miniature. She said, 'Well, that means two of us are having a less than perfect day.'

'Not you, as well,' Tegan said, and she came over to take a look at the set-up on the bench. Nyssa had been saying for some time now that she felt she was losing her grip on all that she'd learned, and that it was time she went over some of the basics of the disciplines she'd acquired on her lost home world of Traken. The gla.s.sware and the spectral a.n.a.lyser had all come from the TARDIS's extensive but haphazardly organised stores, maybe even from one of the rooms that Tegan had identified to Turlough in pa.s.sing. There wasn't much here that she could recognise, except for the shallow gla.s.s dishes in which bacterial cultures were growing and, of course, the book that Nyssa was using for reference. Of all the storage and information retrieval technologies available to the TARDIS, the Doctor insisted that books were the best. To put all of your faith in any more sophisticated system, he would say, is to ask for trouble; when a crisis. .h.i.ts and the lights go out, the time you need your information most is the very time that you can't get to it. He called it a Catch-22 Catch-22 situation. And when Nyssa wanted to know what a situation. And when Nyssa wanted to know what a Catch-22 Catch-22 situation was, the Doctor sent her to the TARDIS's library Earth, Literature (North American), twentieth century (third quarter). situation was, the Doctor sent her to the TARDIS's library Earth, Literature (North American), twentieth century (third quarter).

Tegan said, 'What's the experiment?'

'I'm trying to synthesise an enzyme. It's one of the simpler procedures on the course, but it isn't going right. I'm way out of practice.'

'I thought you did this last time you had one of these blitzes. It went okay then.'

Nyssa sighed. 'I know, but then I had Adric to do the calculation for me. This time I'm using my own figures, and they're nowhere near as good. I've got a lot more ground to cover before I can afford to get lazy again.' She looked despondently at the equipment and at the pages of notes that she'd scattered over every unoccupied s.p.a.ce on the bench. This was to have been her occupation at one time; now it seemed that it was her last link with Traken, and she was in danger of losing it.

Tegan said, 'Why don't I dig out Adric's notes for you?'

'I really ought to do it myself.'

'Come on, cheat a little. My old teacher always said if you don't know, ask.'

'That sounds fair enough.'

'I know, but then she'd whack us for not paying attention in the first place. What do you say?'

Nyssa shook her head. 'I wouldn't know where to look.'

But Tegan was already on her way to the door.

'Adric kept files, didn't he?' she said. 'Besides, it gives me a chance to check up on you-know-who.'

Tegan was on her way to a surprise. Turlough was not, as she was expecting, making a big heap of Adric's possessions in the middle of the floor of his new room; he wasn't even in his new room. As soon as Tegan had left him, he'd switched off his smile like a lightbulb and followed her to the door; he'd watched as she stood out in the corridor and struggled for self-control, and when she'd disappeared into her own room he slipped out and tiptoed past. He was tense, ready to alter his manner in a moment; the Doctor was out here, somewhere. If they met, Turlough had a plausible story ready. He wasn't quite sure what it might be, but extemporisation to suit the moment was his main talent. It was why he'd been chosen.

He'd annoyed Tegan. Well, so what Tegan wasn't the one who mattered. As far as the Doctor was concerned, Turlough's act so far had been flawless.

Anything the two girls might say would look like jealous sniping; it would help his case and weaken theirs. He couldn't lose.

In spite of the uncertain nature of the tour that he'd been given, he'd fixed the main points of the TARDIS layout in his mind. It was much as he'd been led to expect. He got to the console room without meeting the Doctor, and outside the door he stopped and listened for a few seconds. He heard nothing other than the regular motion of the time rotor, and after a moment he strolled in. Turlough, wide-eyed and innocent, Turlough, wide-eyed and innocent, come to see if he can be of any use around the place... come to see if he can be of any use around the place... He let the att.i.tude drop as soon as he was sure that he was alone. He let the att.i.tude drop as soon as he was sure that he was alone.

With the exception of an old beechwood coat-stand that the Doctor had found useful in one of his more flamboyant incarnations, the console room was empty of furniture. Not that it would have been difficult to single out the TARDIS's main control desk; the angular structure with its central rotor dominated the chamber, the translucent core rising and falling as if in time with the very breathing of the craft. Turlough circled it, slowly. The technology was alien to him, the layout of the controls unfamiliar. A wrong move now could ruin all that he'd achieved. He'd come so far on his own. Now it was time to get help.

He reached deep into his pocket and brought out a tiny cube. It looked harmless enough. If he'd been searched he could have claimed that it was some kind of memento or souvenir, a worthless crystal mined by a great-uncle and pa.s.sed down through the family for its sentimental value. Turlough didn't know whether he had any great-uncles or not; if he did, the chances were that none of them had been engaged in anything quite so honest and hardworking as the mining trade.

The point was that the story sounded plausible. He set the cube on a flat surface of the console, and then he crouched to stare into it.

The crystal structure of the cube had been altered to key in with Turlough's mindwave. Only he could unlock it. After a few moments' concentration, the cube began to glow; Turlough waited for it to reach peak brightness before he spoke.

'I did as you said. They've accepted me.' He kept his voice low, knowing that it would still be possible to lose the game even now that he was within reach literally of its end. There was a pause before the voice of his unseen controller, harsh and distorted, came through.

' Acceptance is not enough. You must destroy. Acceptance is not enough. You must destroy. ' '

'I'm in the console room. Tell me what I have to do.'

A series of terse instructions followed. As Turlough was following them through, lifting one of the access panels beneath the console and identifying some of the major components beneath to give himself some orientation, Tegan was crossing the corridor some distance away on an errand that she would never complete.

The interior of the console was unbelievably complicated; without step-by-step guidance, Turlough wouldn't have had a chance. He rested his finger-tips against the sides of the single element that the search had led him to. It felt slightly loose in its mount; a decent grip and a good pull would probably get it free completely.

'What will this do?' he whispered.

' You are touching the heart of the TARDIS. Rip it free! You are touching the heart of the TARDIS. Rip it free! ' '

But Turlough immediately withdrew his hand a little. 'And what happens to me?'

' You will be saved. I am ready to lift you away. You'll live You will be saved. I am ready to lift you away. You'll live forever at my side. forever at my side. ' '

Being saved and living forever sounded attractive enough, but Turlough wasn't so sure about the prospect of eternity spent at the side of the owner of the unseen voice. It was probably just the Black Guardian's way of saying he'd be grateful. Turlough certainly hoped so. He suppressed a little s.h.i.+ver, and re-established his grip on the component deep inside the console. He pulled.

The console reacted immediately. The time rotor locked in place and started to flicker, the lights in the console room dimmed momentarily, and alarm buzzers on the control panels started to make urgent noises. The component came half-way out, and then jammed.

Turlough pulled harder, but he couldn't get it free.

Half a job would accomplish nothing; worse, it would ruin his cover with the Doctor and destroy the Black Guardian's confidence in him. Desperately he tried again; he lost his grip and some of the skin from a knuckle as his hand slipped free.

'It's stuck,' he told the contact cube. 'It won't move any more.' Turlough's mind was racing; if he couldn't succeed, how could he patch up the situation and give himself a second chance? Come on, he told himself, think on your feet, it's what you're good at, but just when he needed his talent most, it seemed to have taken a walk. He pushed the component back into place as best he could. It didn't feel right he'd probably broken connections that would have to be re-made by someone who knew what they were doing, but for now he would have to be satisfied with making everything look normal. He withdrew his hand and started to replace the cover panels.

The Black Guardian didn't like it. ' Continue! Continue! ' The cube pulsed. ' ' The cube pulsed. ' Continue! Continue! ' '

'I can't. There isn't time.'

' The breakup is beginning. You must... The breakup is beginning. You must... ' '

Turlough s.n.a.t.c.hed the cube from the console surface and pocketed it. His controller was silenced, the glow which signified contact dying as soon as he picked it up. He raised himself from his knees and looked around; the rotor was still locked and the alarms were still sounding. He could run from the console room, but if the others were approaching it would be a big mistake; no amount of explanation could remove the appearance of guilt even from the Doctor's mind. He could claim some innocent act of incompetence, perhaps knocking a control without meaning to, but that could be easily checked. At best, he'd be barred from the console room and closely watched whenever he came near to any area of importance; there would be no second chances that way.

He'd have to stay where he was. He'd heard the alarms and had come running to see if he could help.

That ought to do it.

With an eye on the door, Turlough started to work on the expression he'd be using when they caught up with him.

Some problems, the Doctor believed, were best solved through quiet reflection. Many of the decisions that he'd had to make in the recent past had been made under pressure and they hadn't, he had to admit, all been for the best. He was, he thought, a social animal more so than any other Time Lord that he'd known, although he'd always regarded himself as something of a rebel but there were times when he needed to be alone. It was a basic requirement, human or otherwise, and it was in recognition of this that he'd asked Tegan to install the newcomer in Adric's old room. But as far as the Doctor was concerned, staying in one place for too long made him restless; when there was a problem to be tackled, like the resolution of the spiky relations.h.i.+p between the two girls and Turlough, he preferred to be out and roaming.

There was also another advantage. It meant that you couldn't easily be found and distracted.

But as the Doctor emerged on his wandering from the half-lit tunnels where the inhibitor crystals were stacked in their pressurised tanks, the urgent, half-panicky note in Tegan's calling told him that there was more serious business to be attended to. His name echoed faintly through the corridor complex, and he started out towards its source.

Something was badly wrong. Tegan had always been wary in strange situations, but she was no coward; and as the Doctor reached her and she spun around to meet him, it was obvious that she was scared.

'All right, Tegan,' the Doctor said, aiming to calm her down in order to get as much information as he could, 'what's the problem?'

But Tegan could only shake her head. She was breathless from running. 'You'd better come,' was all she could say, and so the Doctor nodded and followed as she led the way.

Crisis had improved Tegan's navigational ability considerably. She made straight for the residential corridor leading to the console room, and as they rounded the final corner it became obvious to the Doctor why he was needed. He stopped for a moment, and then walked forward slowly.

He'd never seen anything like it, not on the inside of the TARDIS. One complete wall of the corridor was starting to break away. The effect was difficult to appreciate. The wall seemed to s.h.i.+mmer from floor to ceiling, as if it wasn't a solid surface at all but a cut-out piece of a waterfall; it sparkled with drowned stars and pulsed like the heartbeat of a sick machine. The Doctor was tempted to touch it, but he knew better.