Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 29

'It has been mentioned,' Anji said, remembering Yuri. His body was still in the room somewhere. She did not look round to see where.

'Good, good,' the Doctor said, still staring across at the doors. Smoke was rolling in from the corridor outside. 'Because it's that theory that led to this Inst.i.tute being set up. It's because of that theory that Maxwell Curtis was so keen to give them all the funding they needed and why he was so desperate for them to discover how to create a black hole. Though that wasn't what he was really aiming to achieve of course.'

'What are you talking about?' the d.u.c.h.ess said. 'What's happening?'

'Were you expecting to be around to see what happened, Mr Holiday?' the Doctor said, still focused on the doorway. 'Or was that another of your little miscalculations? Like bringing the d.u.c.h.ess here along? Or knowing my name before I told you it?'

'What do you mean?' Holiday demanded. And in that moment, Anji could see more clearly than ever what the Doctor had told her.

'You'd better all hold on to your hats,' the Doctor said quietly. 'Even you, George.'

The smoke was gone. A black shadow seemed to have fallen across the doorway, was creeping over the floor.

'Because,' the Doctor said, 'we're coming face to face with proof that the theory holds true.'

A figure stepped into the Great Hall...

'I have faced people who became clocks.' The Doctor's voice was dry and husky. 'I've fought against beasts from other dimensions, and evil you can't begin to imagine. I've bargained with fire demons and I've forgotten more than any of you will or can ever know, Even you, Holiday.'

... and the lights flickered and dimmed.

'But I don't believe I've ever had to face anything anything like this.' like this.'

6: Darkness and Death

The floor seemed to be sloping down towards the doorway. Anji could feel herself beginning to slip, her feet scrabbling to keep their grip.

'What's happening?' the d.u.c.h.ess gasped.

Everyone was having the same problem keeping their balance. Only George seemed unaffected, standing upright and still within the storm of movement. The roof seemed to be curling inwards, angled down towards the shape in the doorway. Towards the figure with no head, just a black cloud that hung in the air over its shoulders.

'Concentrate, Curtis,' the Doctor was shouting. 'Try to regain control. You can do it. I know the elemental forces are getting stronger, but you've been doing it for years holding those forces in check.'

'You can do it, sir,' Holiday echoed. 'We're nearly there now. So very nearly there.'

The tapestry above the fireplace flapped as if in a violent breeze, pulled towards the doorway, the threads straining.

Curtis's voice was deep and sonorous, seeming to come from all around them. 'Yes,' he said slowly. For a moment, as he spoke, the floor seemed to level out, the ceiling sprang back into place. But then they warped and curved again, and Curtis cried out in dismay and pain.

'No it is too late. The gravity waves are too strong.'

'Doctor, what is going on?' Anji shouted. 'What's happening to him?'

'The nascent molecules must have been in his head, maybe in his brain,' the Doctor said. His voice carried above the noise of the flapping tapestry, the sc.r.a.ping of furniture as it slipped and slithered across the floor towards the doorway. 'He's turning into a black hole. At first it was gradual, he could draw matter towards him, feel himself getting slowly heavier over the years. But he could control it, keep it in check.'

Curtis was swaying back and forth in the doorway, sinking slowly but perceptibly as the stone floor beneath him sagged impossibly. The ground lurched again and Anji grabbed for the Doctor as she tumbled forwards. He dragged her back, trying to keep his own footing. A chair rattled and skidded across the flagged floor and seemed to collapse into the dark shape in the doorway.

'If he loses control,' Holiday shouted, 'then we're dead.'

As he spoke, there was the sound of running feet and shouts from outside.

'Oh no,' the Doctor said. 'Keep out, get away from here,' he shouted. But now his voice was swallowed up by the noise as more chairs and a table crashed across the Hall.

Then three figures appeared behind Curtis. Three of Hartford's people, driven back to the Great Hall by the SAS attack. They paused for the briefest instant, staring at Curtis at the empty blackness where his head should be before they opened fire.

The dark stain in the air seemed to spread out. The gunfire became shouts, became screams as the figures in the corridor outside were sucked into the blackness. A shrieking face appeared fleetingly in the cloud as if trying to push its way out. Then that too was swirled away. A large black pebble fell heavily to the ground at Curtis's feet.

The darkness receded, and another face stared out of it at Anji and the others. Maxwell Curtis.

The Doctor frowned. 'He's feeding off the life force of those people,' he said. 'Using their personalities to bolster his own as they cross the event horizon and are absorbed.'

'You're right, Doctor.' The room stretched back to its usual shape as Curtis spoke. 'But I can't sustain it for long. Already I can feel the Darkness growing again within me.'

'You've been doing this for a while, haven't you?' the Doctor said. He walked slowly towards Curtis as he spoke. 'Every time the Darkness gets too much for you, you've absorbed someone. Like the poor man at the auction house when you collected the journal. Sucked over the event horizon, reduced to a near singularity of super*compressed matter weighing so much it seemed to be fixed to the floor.'

'I cannot help it, Doctor. It isn't a choice. I had to hold off the Blackness can't you see that?'

'Yes,' There was real sadness in the Doctor's voice. 'Yes, I do see that. Believe me, I know. If you hadn't, the whole planet the whole of this section of s.p.a.ce would be drawn into the black hole.' sighed. 'So you strengthened the floors and the furniture in your house, and you hoped and prayed to find a solution. You funded research into how black holes can be created in the hope that one day you'd find a cure. Or a way to reverse the process.'

'But how did you know how did you ever guess what was happening to you?' Anji asked.

'Oh, he didn't guess,' the Doctor said, turning away from Curtis face them. 'Someone told him. Someone who has known all along. Someone who knew about the ice cave and its properties suggested to Curtis that this would be an ideal location for the Naryshkin Inst.i.tute.'

'Who?' Anji asked.

'The same person who provided the fake d.u.c.h.ess with her fake journal. Fake apart from the one piece of information that he knew Curtis needed, and would pick up on. That he would see, with a little prompting, as the solution to his dilemma.' As he spoke the Doctor had been circling the group, looking carefully into the face of each of the people there. Now he stopped. In front of Holiday. 'I knew all along,' he said quietly. 'You called me by name before you could possibly know it. I deliberately didn't use it on the phone.'

'Holiday has been helping me,' Curtis said loudly. 'He has always helped me.'

'Why?' the Doctor snapped. 'Why is he helping you? And what solution can he possibly have offered you?'

When Holiday spoke, his voice was quiet and calm, a distinct contrast to the nervous and deferential manservant of a few minute earlier. 'I have offered him a cure, Doctor. I have offered the world a solution.'

'Using the ice in the cave?' the Doctor asked. He looked from Holiday to Curtis and back again. 'Or rather the light. The slow light. How can that help? What can you create by slowing down light, apart from another black hole?' But as he finished speaking, his face drained of colour and his mouth remained open in realisation.

'Yes, Doctor,' Holiday said. 'There is a time machine.'

'And I shall travel back along the slow light beam,' Curtis said. He sounded excited at the prospect. 'Back to a time before the contaminated matter within me was even created. At last I will be free of it.'

'That is not possible, surely?' Anji said. 'Hasn't the black hole been there for ever? That's what Yuri said. The matter was created when all matter was created in the Big Bang.'

'Then I shall go back beyond that,' Curtis said. His eyes were dark pebbles and his face was already going a greyish colour. 'Soon. It must be soon,' he gasped. He clutched his hands to his head and staggered from the room.

'Where's he going?' the d.u.c.h.ess asked. Her voice had changed, her accent seemed less p.r.o.nounced.

'To the ice cave,' Holiday said. 'To the time machine.'

'And then back to before the creation of all the matter in the universe,' the Doctor said. 'The time before time. Time Zero. We have to stop him.'

'But why?' Anji asked. 'We've been to the ice cave, and OK we've seen some weird stuff. But there isn't a time machine there.'

'You're wrong Anji,' the Doctor said softly. 'There is, and you've seen it.'

'I have? You don't mean the TARDIS? That's back here, in the courtyard outside.'

'No, not the TARDIS. In any case that wouldn't work for him, any more than we get younger or older as it travels through time.'

'Then what?'

The Doctor was looking round the small group of people. His gaze latched on to someone, standing quietly behind Anji. 'George, you're very quiet,' he said. His voice was grave. 'Is it because you know what I'm talking about?'

George nodded. 'I think I do, Doctor.'

'You weren't frozen in the ice for a hundred years,' the Doctor said. 'When the cave exploded and the energy was released, you were caught within two interacting shafts of slow light. Intense beams, circling in opposite directions, slowed to the point where time and s.p.a.ce swap roles and time itself becomes an actual dimension.'

'It confused me at first,' George admitted. 'I found if I walked one way I was travelling forwards in time, walk the other and I travelled back again. I thought that was...' He shrugged, embarra.s.sed. 'I thought it was death.'

'That may be partly why you're insubstantial. Like a ghost, but not a ghost. Trapped in a circling spiral of time within the cave.' The Doctor took a deep breath. 'You are are the time machine, George.' the time machine, George.'

5: The Dead Past

'Aren't we going to follow Curtis?' Anji asked.

'Not unless you know how to deal with a black hole,' the Doctor said. He won't be able to maintain control for long. Even absorbing life force won't help him for much longer.'

The Doctor pulled something from his jacket pocket, and Anji realised with surprise that it was Hartford's 'watch'.

'How did you get that?' she asked.

'A present. One that may pose a more immediate threat than poor old Curtis.'

He held the watch up so that they could all see the face.

22:13.

22:12.

22:11.

'It's linked to the explosive charges Hartford's men left.' He was pressing b.u.t.tons on the side of the device, but to no apparent effect.

'I guess we can't stop Curtis if we've been blown to kingdom come,' Anji said. 'But a.s.suming you get that sorted out, how do do we stop him?' we stop him?'

'By using our brains,' The Doctor looked round at them all. 'We have a great deal of knowledge and intelligence available to us here, albeit applied in rather different ways.' He pointed to George as he went on. 'For instance, you may be able to tell us something useful about the time machine, from your own very personal experience of it.'

'Everything I can,' he agreed.

'Can it work?' the d.u.c.h.ess asked. She seemed bewildered by the whole thing, not surprisingly, Anji thought.

'Oh yes,' the Doctor told her. 'It's all to do with slowing down the light source just as the scientists working on optic black holes here needed to. Which is why Curtis was interested, of course. And how he was deceived.' He had the back off the watch now and was prodding dubiously at its innards with his index finger. After a moment he shook his head in annoyance and held the watch to his ear as if to listen to its ticking.

'I've been deceived I don't think this is a watch at all, you know,' the Doctor announced with a grim smile. As he spoke, he turned towards the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. 'Now here we have a master, or rather a mistress, of deception. Of pretending to be what you are not and distorting the truth. Though strictly speaking, shouldn't you have been Romanova rather than Romanov?' The Doctor smiled, as if welcoming the latest guest at a dinner party. 'Allow me to introduce Miss Beatrice MacMillan,' he said to Anji. been deceived I don't think this is a watch at all, you know,' the Doctor announced with a grim smile. As he spoke, he turned towards the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. 'Now here we have a master, or rather a mistress, of deception. Of pretending to be what you are not and distorting the truth. Though strictly speaking, shouldn't you have been Romanova rather than Romanov?' The Doctor smiled, as if welcoming the latest guest at a dinner party. 'Allow me to introduce Miss Beatrice MacMillan,' he said to Anji.

'Who?'

'Trix will do,' the Grand d.u.c.h.ess said. Except that now she spoke without any trace at all of the Russian accent. If anything it was more upper*cla.s.s home counties. 'And I a.s.sume I can now dispense with this rather uncomfortable persona.' As she spoke she was pulling at face. Her fingers gripped a particularly p.r.o.nounced wrinkle, and pulled. The skin stretched like rubber, tearing away. A few seconds, a few more wrinkles pulled away, and Anji was looking at a much younger face. A woman perhaps in her late twenties, though she might be almost a decade younger or older.

The grey wig came off next, and the woman who was not a d.u.c.h.ess shook out her own, fair hair. It dropped, tangled, to her shoulders. She stared with amus.e.m.e.nt at Anji, her eyes green and piercingly alert, like a cat's. 'I don't suppose you've got any moisturiser with you?' she asked. 'The latex really dries your skin something rotten.'

'Sorry,' Anji said. Even that was an effort.

'You know,' Trix went on, 'coming here was a really bad move in retrospect. I should have taken the money and run.'

'Yes, you should, Miss MacMillan.' It was Holiday who spoke. 'That was our agreement after all.'

'Ah yes.' The Doctor was facing Holiday now. 'The devoted manservant. Mr Holiday. Responsible for telling Curtis what was going on, and for finding out about the expedition journal. And of course for writing it and providing the prop to Miss MacMillan for her deception. Now she was just after the money. But what are you are after?'

'What do you think, Doctor?' Holiday met the Doctor's steady stare and held it. 'I did tell you. Have you forgotten so soon?'

'Our little chat in Spain, you mean? About the nature of Time.'

Holiday blinked.

'I knew it was you all along,' the Doctor continued. 'As I said, your mistake with my name. And also the conceit of yours. And I do mean 'conceit' in every sense of the word. Holiday, a corruption of Holy Day. Think of a holy day,' he said, turning to George.

'Er, Christmas?'

'You get mistletoe at Christmas,' the Doctor said. 'But that's not quite right. Tell them, Anji.'

Anji knew the answer. The Doctor had told her almost as soon as they met, not least so she didn't give away that she could tell. 'Sabbath,' she said quietly.

Sabbath laughed and clapped his hands. 'Very good, both of you. Not that it matters really. Once Curtis reaches the time machine, none of this will matter.'

'I think it will,' the Doctor said. 'Your suit distracted me for a while,' he added. 'I couldn't understand how you managed to squeeze your rather ample form inside it.'