Doctor Who_ Logopolis Part 1

DOCTOR WHO.

LOGOPOLIS.

by Christopher H. Bidmead.

1.

Events cast shadows before them, but the huger shadows creep over us unseen. When some great circ.u.mstance, hovering somewhere in the future, is a catastrophe of incalculable consequence, you may not see the signs in the small happenings that go before. The Doctor did, however - vaguely.

While the Doctor paced back and forth in the TARDIS cloister room trying to make some sense of the tangle of troublesome thoughts that had followed him from Traken, in a completely different sector of the Universe, in a place called Earth, one such small foreshadowing was already beginning to unfold. It was a simple thing. A policeman leaned his bicycle against a police box, took a key from the breast pocket of his uniform jacket and unlocked the little telephone door to make a phone call.

Police Constable Donald Seagrave was in a jovial mood. The sun was s.h.i.+ning, the bicycle was performing perfectly since its overhaul last Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and now that the water-main flooding in Burney Street was repaired he was on his way home for tea, if that was all right with the Super.

It seemed to be a bad line. Seagrave could hear his Superintendent at the far end saying, 'Speak up . . . Who's that . . .?', but there was this whirring noise, and then a sort of chuffing and groaning . . .

The baffled constable looked into the telephone, and then banged it on his helmet to try to improve the connection. If his attention hadn't been so engaged with the receiver he might have noticed a distinct wobble coming over the police box. Its blue surface s.h.i.+mmered momentarily and grew bluer. The whirring sound stopped, but then so did the voice at the other end as the line went dead. The constable looked ruefully at the telephone. Now he would have to cycle all the way back to the station and get permission from the Super personally, by which time the sun would doubtless be gone and with it the prospect of a relaxing afternoon in the garden potting out the sweet-peas . . .

This speculation was the constable's last thought in this world. As he replaced the receiver his face was suddenly slammed up against the blue door, as if - but that was impossible - something inside the box had grabbed his hand.

His arm disappeared up to the shoulder. His head lolled back, the eyes staring. As the throttled, terminal gasp bubbled away to a whisper in his throat, from inside the box echoed the light delicate sound of a chuckle.

The TARDIS was full of surprises, but Adric wasn't ready for what he saw when he turned the corner.

Suddenly he seemed to be in the open air, in a sort of crumbling stone courtyard, with a floor unevenly flagged with stone slabs. A few small twisted trees grew up between the flagstones, and beyond them the boy caught the crimson flash of the familiar flapping coat. At least he had found the Doctor.

Adric was about to call to him when he was stopped by the solemnity with which the Doctor was pacing the pillared walk that flanked the quadrangle. His strange companion seemed deeply troubled.

The Doctor must have sensed that he wasn't alone, because he slowed his steps and turned. So caught up in his thoughts was he that at first he appeared not to recognise the dark-haired boy. Then Adric found himself being beckoned across the quadrangle.

The Doctor wasn't pleased to be disturbed; the cloister room was his special place for deep, private thinking. 'Whenever you see me in here pacing up and down like this, be a good chap and don't interrupt. Unless it's terribly urgent. It's not, is it?'

The boy shook his head. The Doctor shook his too; it was as if there was a loose thought in there, rattling among the centuries of wisdom.

'Wel , now you know. In fact there's no need to come barging in here at all. If it's terribly urgent you can always ring the cloister bell.'

Adric had never heard of the cloister bell. The Doctor explained that it was a sort of communications device. 'Reserved for wild catastrophes and sudden calls to man the battle stations.'

'Battle stations? The TARDIS doesn't have them, surely?'

'Not as such,' the Doctor replied vaguely. 'Still, I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn't be running a tighter s.h.i.+p.'

He scratched at a nearby pillar. The stone was powdery, like chalk, and a rivulet of dust cascaded from the point beneath the Doctor's finger. 'I'm afraid the Second Law of Thermodynamics is taking its toll of the old thing.'

The Alzarians had given Adric a Badge for Mathematical Excellence, although his grasp of physics wasn't very good - but on the journey from his home planet Adric had had plenty of time to learn from the Doctor, and now he knew about the Earth physicist Maxwell, and his ideas on entropy. Entropy was the waste energy that builds up in systems, the rust on the wheels, the weeds in the vegetable garden, the heat that eats away at components in the computer. Entropy seemed to be much on the Doctor's mind lately.

Maxwell's Second Law of Thermodynamics consisted of two grim words: 'Entropy increases.'

The Doctor sighed. 'The more you put things together the more they keep falling to bits.

That's the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and I never heard a truer word spoken. Have you seen the state of the time column lately? Wheezing like a grampus.'

'It will get us to Gallifrey, won't it?' Adric asked anxiously.

'Gallifrey?' The Doctor spoke the name of his own planet as if it were a new word in his vocabulary. 'Oh yes . . . Are you really set on visiting Gallifrey?'

Adric nodded. 'That is where we're going, isn't it?'

The Doctor sat down slowly. Luckily there was a carved stone bench set in the wall where they were standing, but there quite easily might not have been. 'That was the very question I was pondering, Adric. In a general way. There's bound to be a lot of fuss about Romana? Why she stayed behind in E-s.p.a.ce, official investigations, all that sort of thing . . .'

'The Time Lords won't approve?'

'As a Gallifreyan she's broken the cardinal rule - she's become involved, and in a pretty permanent sort of way. Perhaps we should let a few oceans go under the bridge before heading back home.'

Adric smiled to conceal his disappointment. 'And see Gallifrey later?'

The Doctor nodded, but in no very positive way. 'Let me put another idea to you . . . The place I have in mind isn't too far off our route. Well, sort of, give or take a pa.r.s.ec or two.

It's my home from home.'

He turned to Adric with a grin. 'You'll like it. It's that place called Earth I was telling you about.'

That same afternoon, outside a cottage house in a quiet village-like street many hundreds of pa.r.s.ecs from where the Doctor and Adric were, but less than fifty miles away from all that remained of the unfortunate Constable Seagrave, a care-worn woman was sitting behind the steering wheel of a battered sports car that was almost old enough to have been new when she was a girl. Despite the spring suns.h.i.+ne, she was wel wrapped up against the possibility of cold. There was, as she was fond of saying, no sense in taking chances with your health.

A young woman in the neat purple uniform of an air stewardess came haring out of the house, her flight bag b.u.mping at her side. 'Sorry to keep you waiting, Aunt Vanessa.

Let's go.'

Aunt Vanessa hadn't been having much luck with the starter. Each time the engine fired, then spluttered out.

Tegan was barely twenty years old, but she was used to taking charge. 'More choke.

And easy on the throttle as you turn her over.'

Aunt Vanessa nodded her white fur hat towards the house. 'While I do that, dear, I wonder if you'd mind shutting the front door.'

Tegan's Australian accent became even broader. 'Oh, rabbits! I promise I'll get organised one day . . . '

Tegan closed the front door and ran back down the path again. 'Sorry, first flight nerves, I guess.' In obedience to her niece's imperious gesture, Aunt Vanessa abandoned the intractable ignition switch and humped her bundled-up body across to the pa.s.senger seat.

Immediately Tegan pulled the starter the old engine sprang to life. Clicking on her safety belt reminded her of the training course she had just completed, and she went into the routine. 'Good evening, pa.s.sengers. To ensure continued safety on this flight it is necessary to draw your attention to the oxygen apparatus situated above each seating position . . .'

Wary of draughts, Aunt Vanessa hunched further into her fur collar as the car pulled away from the curb.

Tegan changed smoothly up into third. 'This is brought into operation by gently pulling the orange tag and placing the mouthpiece over the nose and mouth. Disposable paper bags, together with our flight magazine, may be found in the recess in the seat immediately in front of you . . . '

And she drove off down the street. Although she didn't know it then, Tegan's route was destined to take her past the mysterious police box and onto a journey very different from the pa.s.senger flight her training had prepared her for - a journey she would never forget for the rest of the life.

Adric and the Doctor were walking quickly back through the maze of corridors to the TARDIS console room. It still puzzled Adric how the Doctor managed to find his way around the vast craft without a map.

'Earth's the planet with all the oceans, isn't it?' Adric asked as the Doctor paused at a junction of three identical pa.s.sages.

'That's the chap.'

'It sounds wet.'

The Doctor set off again with long shambling steps that made it hard for Adric to keep up. 'Wet it is,' he said. 'At least, where we're going.'

The Doctor had explained once already about the blue boxes, but it hadn't made much sense to Adric. A lot of what the Doctor said was like that. According to the Doctor the blue boxes looked more or less like the TARDIS, but weren't. They had no s.p.a.cious accommodation, no viewer screens, and they didn't time-travel . . . Adric didn't see why the Earth people bothered having them.

The corridor had petered out into a narrow pa.s.sage. The Doctor stopped in front of a door. 'They're a sort of elementary communications device. Telephone boxes, from the Greek. 'Tele' meaning 'a long way', and 'phone' meaning 'sound', and 'box' meaning . . .

' The Doctor opened the door. It was a small cupboard. 'Meaning we're lost . . .'

They weren't really, but the Doctor had to ask Adric not to ask any more questions while he concentrated on finding the way. It was quite some time before they were back in the console room, and the Doctor was able to resume a calm explanation of his idea about going to Earth.

'I see,' said Adric. 'We're going to visit one of these boxes that are like the TARDIS.' It sounded to him like another of the Doctor's typically batty schemes.

'You're getting your topsy mixed up with your turvy,' the Doctor corrected. 'The TARDIS is very like it it! The blue box is what the mathematical model of the TARDIS exterior is based on.'

The Doctor was at the console, busily setting the co-ordinates for Earth. Even after several adventures with the Doctor there was so much Adric didn't understand about the Time Lord and his technology - but he wanted to, very much.

'Block transfer computation,' the Doctor explained when he had finished at the console.

A frown creased the smooth young face at his shoulder. 'I've never heard of that.'

Adric's precocious seriousness amused the Doctor. 'No reason why you should.

Logopolis is a quiet little place - keeps itself to itself.'

'Logopolis? But I thought we were going to Earth.'

'No, Logopolis is the other place. We take the measurements there afterward.'

Adric was by now thoroughly confused. 'We're going to measure Logopolis?'

'We measure the police box on Earth and then take the measurements to Logopolis...'

said the Doctor patiently. Catching sight of the boy's blank expression he had the tact to add: 'I'm afraid I'm not explaining this very well. It's all to do with the problem of the chameleon circuit...'

Adric opened his mouth, on the point of voicing another question. But at that moment the console room echoed to the sound of what might have been a big clock bell, deep-toned and stately. It seemed to be coming from a very long way away, and yet at the same time was somehow sinisterly present in the room.

The Doctor stopped dead, as if rooted to the spot. The expression on the Time Lord's face sent a s.h.i.+ver up the boy's spine, and he froze too, and listened.

It was the first but not the last time Adric was to hear the cloister bell.

The traffic became heavier as they approached London, but Aunt Vanessa's little car was going splendidly. Tegan enjoyed the rush of wind in her hair and the feel of the engine under her control. She'd been a natural driver ever since the age of ten, when her father had first lifted her onto the springy steel saddle of the tractor on their sheep farm in Australia.

Driving was great. But flying - that was really travelling. Tegan took her eyes off the road for a moment to glance up at the big blue canopy of the sky that seemed to go up and up without limit above them. Cars were all right, they got you moving, but they did keep you stuck on the one level, reminding you that you were just a little human being like everybody else with your feet in your shoes and your shoes on the ground.

'Tegan! Look out!' Aunt Vanessa's voice broke abruptly into her meditations.

The lorry was the size of a brontosaurus compared with Aunt Vanessa's little mouse of a sports car, and it was cutting in, straight across them, closing in from the middle lane.

Tegan slammed on the brakes and wrenched the wheel over. The lorry pa.s.sed in front of them with only inches to spare and travelled on towards London lumberingly unaware of the terror it had caused. With a screech of rubber the sports car thumped into the curb and came to a halt.

'Oh, rabbits!' Tegan exclaimed, jumping out. Through the windscreen she saw Aunt Vanessa's face peeping out from its nest of white fur in dazed indignation. 'I'm sorry, Aunt, honestly. I'm usually a pretty good driver.'

There wasn't any damage done to the body-work, but when Tegan saw the front nearside tyre her heart sank. 'Aunt Vanessa, it's a blow out.'

The elderly bundle of fur extracted itself from the pa.s.senger seat to have a look. 'So it is. Dear me.' She was taking it quite sportingly, considering, Tegan thought. 'Well,' said Aunt Vanessa, 'what do we do now?'

Unknown to them that question was already decided. Perhaps Fate is always lying in wait a few yards up the road; in this case for Tegan and her Aunt Vanessa it was already in view. If they hadn't both been hypnotised by the immediate but relatively trivial flat-tyre disaster that loomed so large in their minds, they could have spotted it from where they stood.

It took the unusual shape of a blue police box. An abandoned bicycle was leaning against it, the small door that housed the telephone was open, and from it dangled the receiver on the end of its cord.

Adric listened. Apart from the wheezing of the time column as it heaved up and down in the middle of the console, all was quiet. Adric found himself oddly disappointed. 'The cloister bell's stopped.'

The Doctor nodded gravely.

'What does it mean, Doctor?'

'Nothing very much when it's not sounding.' The Doctor was trying to make a joke of it, but Adric could see that the Time Lord regarded the cloister bell as far from funny.

'But something must have made it ring?'

The Doctor bristled at the question. 'Not necessarily. It could well be our old friend entropy crumbling away at the systems circuitry. We'd better check the main logic junction.'

With a quick glance at the console to make sure the flight to Earth was on track, the Doctor swept out of the console room. Adric followed.

'Is that something to do with the chameleon circuit you were telling me about?' Adric asked.

The Doctor said that it wasn't, and went on to explain that while he didn't mind being pestered with questions in the normal course of events - didn't mind at all, in fact found the boy's ceaseless interrogation of anything and everything rather stimulating - there were times (and this was one of them) when whys were unwise and silence was golden . . .

They travel ed down the corridors without saying another word, and the Doctor wrapped his own dark thoughts around himself, with faint sighs and mumbles escaping his lips from time to time.

Eventually they came to a large oval arch set into the wal of the corridor. It framed a kind of panel made of a translucent material that Adric discovered to be oddly heavy as he helped the Doctor lift it down. Behind the panel was what looked like a ma.s.s of fine grey hair, except that if you looked closely you could see that each hair had a tiny light that moved up and down its length. The effect was dazzling; the thing seemed to be alive.

The Doctor poked the hair with his finger, and the lights flickered in response.

'Nothing wrong with the main logic junction, then.' He signalled to Adric to help him put the panel back. 'Well, if the intermittent fault wasn't inside the TARDIS it must be outside the TARDIS. Someone must be trying to get in touch with us. Long way away, poor reception.'

They began walking back the way they had come. The Doctor turned to Adric, as if seeking a second opinion. 'Don't you think?'