Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 16

Grandfather Paradox took a step back. 'I only have to wait and you will be mine.'

It had already happened, from his point of view.

'You would use Venusian aikido against me, when I am the only one-armed being who has ever mastered it?' the Grandfather sneered.

'It seems you can beat me with one arm tied behind your back,' the Doctor said ruefully.

He could taste his own blood. He'd split his lip at some point. It didn't matter. He looked up at his opponent. The cube the Doctor had taken from the console hadn't just been a handy weapon. It was a vital component keeping the forces of this place in check. Now it sounded as though there was a hurricane outside. The walls started to creak and crack like an old galleon caught in that hurricane.

The Grandfather's confidence faltered for the first time.

'You wanted the power of the Edifice,' the Doctor shouted, 'and you're going to get it. Just one bolt fired will drain off the last of the binding energy holding the Edifice together.'

He struggled to his feet. Grandfather Paradox swooped across the room, cloak flapping. He cracked his head down on the Doctor's, but only connected with the frontal part of the skull, one of the better-protected areas of the body.

Still, it was dizzying and the Grandfather was taking the opportunity to grab for the cube.

It was the Doctor's turn to parry an attack.

He was perfectly calm, perfectly alert.

The Grandfather was at no advantage now that he was on the offensive.

This wasn't defending against an attack he remembered coming. This was trying to land a blow or make a grip that hadn't worked. In any event, the Doctor simply had to deflect whatever was thrown at him. He knew his opponent wanted the cube, so it was easy to block a series of clumsy grabs and swipes.

He still couldn't land a blow of his own, though. Grandfather Paradox was everything he was, with 292 years' more experience. And he would know what was coming.

Unless the Doctor changed history.

95.The Doctor dived to one side then elbowed his opponent in the solar plexus just about the most obvious place he could have attacked, so, para-doxically, the last place the Grandfather was ready to defend.

The Grandfather doubled up and collapsed on to the cracked ivory floor.

The Doctor sailed lightfoot over his opponent, hands behind his back, and landed at the console thirty feet away.

'Gallifrey, Kasterborous. . . this entire sector of s.p.a.ce will be torn apart, destroyed,' the Grandfather managed.

The Doctor realised there were tears in his opponent's eyes. The Edifice had lurched to one side, the floor was pitched at an angle. He started edging around the console to the right panel. 'Forever. But your entire fleet will perish along with it.'

'You will die too.'

'Just as well, I think. I'd never be able to live with the memory anyway.'

'You will destroy all Gallifrey wipe out millions of lives.'

The Doctor had never realised just how persuasive he could be. Committing ma.s.s murder how could that be right?

'I never thought I'd admit to choosing the lesser of two evils,' he admitted.

'You know you can't bring yourself to do this.'

The more he thought about it, the less the Doctor liked this third option.

He couldn't walk away, he thought. No. . . But how about the second option?

Gallifrey would fall to Faction Paradox, but lives would be saved. The war would be over, forever. And he had spent so long worried about a future filled with an all-consuming war, fought across infinity and eternity, that it had never once occurred to him that afterwards there would follow a peace.

This way, there would be a short war, barely a skirmish, then peace in heaven, with him able to shape things from the heart of power and influence. Where there's life, there's hope.

He looked up at the Grandfather. But there was the denial of his argument: an image of himself utterly without hope. The Ghost of Christmas Cancelled.

An image of the future, unless. . .

'I must!' the Doctor cried out. 'I will be sparing my people a war that will dehumanise them to the point of becoming monsters. I will be saving them from whatever living nightmares the Faction's technology can inflict on them.'

The two men shouted at each other, their words lost in the din of the Edifice tearing itself apart.

The Grandfather flew gracefully over to the console just as the Doctor reached the lever, and began a series of lunges with his one arm, swinging it like a club. The Doctor rolled and dodged, never more than one step in front of his opponent, unable to go in any direction but anticlockwise round 96 the edge of the console. Every time the Grandfather's hand hit a fragile control panel it punched holes, and splinters and sparks flew out of it. Now they were inches from each other. A palm came down flat on the Doctor's chest, forcing the air out of his lungs, pinning him to the console. The Grandfather grabbed the Doctor's arm and bit right into it, through his coat and s.h.i.+rt, drawing blood.

As his opponent raised his cackling, twisted face the Doctor punched it with his free hand, breaking the Grandfather's nose and grip.

By now, just as the Doctor had planned, they had moved all the way round the console, right back to the lever.

The Doctor made a grab for it.

The Grandfather reached out and caught his wrist with a perfectly executed katate-tori katate-tori that he just didn't see coming. But the Doctor had his other hand free now, and there was nothing the Grandfather could do about that. that he just didn't see coming. But the Doctor had his other hand free now, and there was nothing the Grandfather could do about that.

The Doctor grasped the lever.

The Doctor pulled the lever down.

Then as if the act had drained him of all his strength he sagged against the console.

Grandfather Paradox was howling. A strange, anguished sound that the Doctor couldn't imagine himself making, and which he now knew he never would make. There was nowhere either of them could run. Nothing either of them could do. The die had been cast, and now the two of them simply had to wait for oblivion. It felt like defeat, not a victory.

He could hear the energies of the Edifice gathering together for one final, inevitable, release.

Why could he hear footsteps?

Gallifrey's atmosphere was swirling off into s.p.a.ce in streams of ionised gas.

The ice caps melted, then vaporised. Land and sea were boiling. As great earthquakes rippled across the surface the cities were shattering or tipping into great chasms of lava. The Capitol had been the primary target. Not even photons had escaped its destruction. The few time s.h.i.+ps that tried to pull away were torn apart. Time and s.p.a.ce were screaming as Gallifrey was uprooted from them. The whole planet was distorted, losing form. The ivory moon, Pazithi Gallifreya, was caught and consumed by one of the atmospheric flares. The Faction Paradox fleet had ceased to exist some time ago, unnoticed and unmourned.

There was a flash as bright as the sun for the merest moment, annihilation so profound that it stretched deep into the past and far into the future. Then Gallifrey was gone.

97.

Chapter Six.

And the Dream I Had Was True

Marnal didn't say anything for a moment. The picture had broken up. The forces released during the destruction permitted no observer. The Doctor looked drained. Rachel just stood there and watched them.

'You destroyed Gallifrey,' Marnal told the Doctor. He had known, but even he hadn't quite believed it until he saw it with his own eyes. 'It was your choice, an active choice.'

The Doctor didn't say anything.

'Does that jog your memory?'

'I get the distinct sense that jogging my memory would be like jogging into a minefield,' the Doctor said quietly.

'Do you still deny it?' Marnal hissed.

'I never denied it, I said that as a result of what happened that day I lost my Memories. Seeing this doesn't strike a chord.'

'A lawyer's answer,' Marnal said, 'a politician's answer.'

'The true answer,' the Doctor insisted.

'Do you accept the version of events you just saw?'

'I have a couple of questions about it,' the Doctor began. 'It's missing a lot of the context, I think, but '

'Context?' Marnal shouted. 'Context? The context is that you committed an act of genocide.'

'Two, if you include Faction Paradox,' the Doctor reminded him, realising, as he said it, that this wasn't the best defence. He paused, then continued: 'I don't have to remember anything. Judging from what we just saw and heard I had to act quickly, it wasn't an easy decision, it was made under stress and physical danger, and I managed to save the universe, including Gallifrey, from domination by a hostile power.'

'Churchill didn't save Britain from the Luftwaffe by ordering it to be razed to the ground.'

'He hadn't already lost. It was more like Masada, where '

'You murdered the entire population of our planet.'

'We just saw for ourselves: Faction Paradox was a virus, one that was on the verge of infecting the whole of history, ending cause and effect, destroying 99 everything that means anything, even meaning itself.'

'And it was led by your future self.'

'I have no idea what he was. He looked like me. He may well have been what I would have become if I hadn't made the choice I did if I hadn't made the choice I did. What I did destroyed him, his scheme, his army and every one of his followers, and very probably prevented any of them from ever existing. I won't become him.'

'Are you sure about that?'

The Doctor looked stung, and didn't answer.

'Yet again, you're revelling in the death and destruction your intervention caused.'

'I'm not revelling,' the Doctor said, so softly Rachel could barely hear him.

'You heard it spelled out: if I hadn't acted, the Faction would have won. If I had joined the Faction, it would have won. It had already happened. You can't alter the past.'

'You would dare quote the First Law of Time to me as you boast of flouting it? What about the Second Law, Doctor?'

'It sounds like you're now the one giving lawyers' answers.'

'"Do nothing, and all will be well."'

'I've no idea about the laws of time. Perhaps I did then, I don't remember I don't remember.

I know I did what I thought was right. Now, please listen to me. I've got a couple of questions of my own.'

'No. There are no questions now, Doctor, except what your punishment should be. Your guilt is beyond any doubt.'

'For one thing,' the Doctor continued regardless, 'well, who are you, and how did you get here? But let's leave that aside for the moment. There's something very, very important missing. A vital piece of the puzzle. An evidence of absence. Something to do with those footsteps.'

'What footsteps?' Marnal sneered.

The Doctor sighed. 'The least you should be doing is paying attention.'

The pub wasn't like the ones Fitz would remember, but truth be told it was better. It served snacks and coffee as well as beer. It looked clean and sleek, not as though it was proud the walls were grubby and the floor had never been scrubbed. Trix liked the idea of sitting for a drink somewhere that women were made to feel comfortable.

'This is more your sort of place?' Trix asked.

Fitz was smiling, looking relaxed. He'd spent the entire meal at the Indian restaurant unsure of himself. Nervous around the waiters, worried about the menu, really not comfortable with Greg.

'Oh yeah. Not sure about the music.'

100.The barman was handing over the drinks. 'Never liked him myself, either.

Into more acoustic stuff.'

'What like?'

Trix tuned out while the two men had their little conversation. This was going to work. She and Fitz knew each other well and they'd trusted each other with their lives. They liked and respected each other. They could talk about anything and everything.

'Your husband knows his Sixties music,' the barman conceded.

'It's like he lived there,' she told him, and only realised afterwards what he'd called Fitz. These days you don't a.s.sume that sort of stuff about couples.

'Do you play at all?' the barman asked Fitz.

Fitz shrugged.