Part 31 (2/2)

'Too long. Azathoth will be through to India by then.'

'So what are our options?' Holmes asked.

'I don't know,' the Doctor said.

Bernice gazed sceptically at him.

'No cards up the sleeve?'

'None.'

'No long-range plans?'

'Not one.'

'Scout's honour?'

'May my woggle fall off if I lie.'

'That chant,' Ace said thoughtfully. 'You said it weakens the fabric of reality, whatever that is, enabling a gateway to be opened, and you also said that this fabric thing is already weakest between India and this plain.'

'Indeed.'

'Well, how easy would it be to move the gateway? What I mean is, could we change the chant and alter the aim point?'

The Doctor thought for a moment.'

'Hmm. A canny notion, and one well worth bearing in mind. What made you think of it?'

Ace smiled. 'Something I overheard while I was hanging around waiting for you to arrive,' she said.

Delving around in his pockets, the Doctor finally pulled out a piece of green chalk. 'No paper,' he complained. He looked around for something to write on, and his eyes lit up as their penetrating gaze crossed Ace's battle-armour.

'Ace, turn around.'

'You what?'

'Just do it!'

He began to scribble on the matt-black surface, quickly covering it with symbols and small diagrams, some of which I recognized from the inscriptions on Azathoth's caravan. Sometimes he would go back and rub a line out with his sleeve: once or twice he retrieved chalks of other colours and added notes in and around his original ones. Holmes was following the Doctor's calculations so closely that he ended up with chalk-dust on the tip of his nose. The Doctor kept up a running barrage of commentary, muttering phrases such as: 'Of course, the rhomeson flux must be taken into account. . : , 'it's important to remember that E equals MC cubed in the exo-s.p.a.ce time continuum. . : and 'for heaven's sake, keep still Ace!'

The chant was building up, with individual voices soaring above the main theme, and a strong beat pus.h.i.+ng it along. My head was beginning to throb in sympathy.

Finally the Doctor leaned back and sighed.

'This would have been so much easier with the books from the Library, but Sherringford still has them. Fortunately I had a quick flick through some of them, and I also managed to chat with one or two of the fakirs when we were on our way to the surface. I think we can do it.'

'How?' said Ace, stretching after sitting in a cramped position for so long.

'The whole thing is frequency-specific. It's the subtle s.h.i.+fting of discords that weakens the structure of s.p.a.cetime, enabling the connection to be made with the nearest world - Earth. If we introduce a specific set of new discords, we can move the point of connection.'

'But why didn't Azathoth or Sherringford think of that?' I asked.

'Because they were thinking in purely spatial terms,' the Doctor replied.

'And the frequencies required are just too high to achieve. It never occurred to them to move the aim-point in time. The calculations are harder, but the frequencies can be sung, and the further forward or back in time we move the aim point, the wider our spatial error can be.'

'In time,' Holmes breathed. 'You mean . . .?'

'I mean I'm looking for suggestions as to the best place to dump an evil G.o.d and its wors.h.i.+ppers. Somewhere that they can't do any major harm. A geological disaster would do perfectly. Eighteen eighty seven, plus or minus fifty years, and on the Earth's surface. That's our window of opportunity. Once we dump them, we can sing our own way back to Tir Ram's cavern, and from there we can make our way home.'

Bernice thought for a moment, then said, 'What about Siberia, nineteen-oh-eight? The TARDIS explosion?'

'No,' the Doctor snapped. 'If I start mixing dimensional rips they could end up anywhere.'

'Krakatoa!' I exclaimed. 'Four years ago. If it's an explosion you're looking for, that's the biggest one I can remember.'

'Is that east or west of Java?' the Doctor said, then thought for a moment.

'A distinct possibility,' he added, 'but a trifle dangerous if we get caught up in it. Ditto the t.i.tanic in nineteen twelve, which I was also considering, with the added problem that we would be interfering in our own pasts. Has it occurred to you that we seem to have toured most of the major disasters of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in the past few months?'

'California,' said Ace quietly. 'Nineteen-oh-six. The great San Francisco earthquake.'

'Perfect!' the Doctor shouted. 'We missed that one. What made you think of that?'

'Personal interest,' she replied. 'It was an old school History project.'

History?, I thought, then let it slip away.

The Doctor delved in his pockets and pulled out a large, leather-bound book.

'My five-hundred-year diary,' he said, catching my inquiring glance. 'All sorts of information that's completely pointless unless you are trying to avert an alien invasion.'

He flicked through the pages.

'Now let me see . . . We'll need a location which is known to have been completely wiped out. We can't risk them escaping. That rules out quite a bit of the town...'

His scowl deepened as his fingers riffled through page after page.

'Town Hall . . . no. Agnews State Insane Asylum . . . no. Palace Hotel...'

A smile broke across his face.

'Yes! Razed to the ground.'

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