Part 38 (1/2)

'That's not surprising,' said Romana. 'I felt the same. We shouldn't be here, after all, strictly speaking.'

'No, we shouldn't,' he said emphatically. 'We were blown here by a strange, unpredictable accident. The erosion of the TARDIS systems circuitry combined with an impulse from the Randomizer sent us cartwheeling wildly off course. We should have left right away. But we didn't.'

'We had to pop out ”just so we could say we'd been”,' Romana reminded him.

He snapped his fingers. 'Exactly. A chance to c.o.c.k a minor snook at the Time Lords. Just what would I have done. Walked out, got myself involved, started to tinker. began the logical, forseeable chain of decisions that have brought me to this point.' He raised a finger and pointed through the mist ahead. 'There.'

Romana squinted. The tall blue shape of the TARDIS was just visible on the horizon. 'You're taking a very egocentric view. Plenty of other people made decisions along the way. Me and K9 for a start. Galatea, Harmock, Jafrid, St-'

The Doctor cut her off: 'Yes, they did, didn't they? All of them people who shouldn't be here.'

Romana was getting exasperated. 'What do you mean?'

'The artificiality of it all,' the Doctor replied, 'that I mentioned to you earlier.'

'These discrepancies were connected to the Femdroids' deception of the Hive, Master,' K9 said patiently.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I think the Femdroids were part of an even bigger game.' He turned to Romana. 'The level of coincidence is too high.

Our arrival. The Chelonians just wandering into this system at the very moment Galatea needed to start a war to fox the Hive. The similarity in technology between K9 and the Femdroids.'

'That wasn't a coincidence,' said Romana.

The Doctor stared blankly at her. 'What?'

'The Femdroids' creators used K9 as a blueprint using information from Stokes's mind,' she explained.

The Doctor put a hand to his temple. 'Who? Stokes? Not that artist fellow?'

'Yes, I forgot to tell you, in all the rush,' Romana admitted.

'But how did he get here?' The Doctor's face now took on a haunted expression. As Romana opened her mouth to reply he held up a hand to silence her. 'No, never mind that. Where is he now?'

'He sloped off somewhere,' said Romana. 'Actually, I thought he'd be waiting for us at the TARDIS, if he managed to find it.'

K9 nodded his agreement. 'That is his most likely course of action.'

The Doctor stared at the TARDIS and then broke into a frantic run, without a word of explanation. Romana followed on, baffled, with K9 in her arms.

Galatea stared out at the empty city. Soon the fountains would flow again, the tramways would be filled with their silent, pollutant-free traffic, and the citizens would work and play in total harmony. Her vision had been accomplished.

One of the dome workers had helped her to rig up a communicator using materials from the smashed computer room. A picture relayed from one of the orbital satellites showed a rough ring of the survivors on Barclow, including General Jafrid, Harmock and that man Fritchoff she'd had sent away a few years ago. He and a few others in the dome were strong-willed enough to break through the conditioning. Before they could she'd implanted a suitable fantasy in their minds and expelled them. Now, she thought with a smile, everyone could come home. Metralubit was coming home.

'Now, you've been a very naughty girl, all told, keeping things from us,'

Harmock was saying. 'There'll be no need for any of this nastiness and secrecy in future, will there?'

'Absolutely not,' said Galatea with a glad heart. 'I shall be pleased to serve my organic masters in a more direct way.'

'Still,' Harmock went on, 'I have to say I admire your nerve. Doing this all on your own. Well done.'

Galatea nodded. 'Thank you, Premier. I like to think I've always done my best.'

Just for a second she heard a voice, deep and granite hard, somewhere deep inside her head. The bargain is over, it told her, our business is done.

Galatea thanked the voice. It had given her exactly what it had promised: the total destruction of the Hive and the safety of her people, thanks to the provision of Stokes's great knowledge. And she, of course, had fulfilled her side of the bargain. She had invented the concept of const.i.tutional privilege, conditioned the humans to believe it, and encouraged Romana and K9 to come to Metralubit. It had been easy enough.

But she was happy she would never hear the voice again.

General Jafrid slunk away from the screen, feeling a bit left out from all this joy and excitement. One of the young humans - Cadinot, wasn't it? - came across and asked kindly, 'Are you all right there, General?'

Jafrid winked at him, remembering his old friend Admiral Dolne. 'I'm fine,'

he said. 'Just fine'

And then, just for a second, he heard the voice again for the first time in over a hundred years. The deal is done, the voice said, and our business is over.

Jafrid thanked it inwardly. The voice had delivered what it had promised: a lengthy, untroubled early retirement, thanks to a convenient time storm that had whipped him and his men here from their rightful place thousands of years before, liberating them from the warrior lifestyle. And his side of the bargain could not have been easier. All the voice had asked him to do was sit put on Barclow for a hundred and twenty-five years, and pretend to really want it.

Now the voice was gone, and he could spend the rest of his retirement in luxury down on Metralubit, with its plentiful green s.p.a.ces and large arable areas. It would be a pleasure indeed to graze there.

The Doctor burst into the TARDIS to find the console room empty. He peered beneath the console and in all the comers; he even looked behind the hatstand and among the items he had been sorting out before they had entered the Time Spiral.

Romana almost fell through the doors, exhausted by the run and from carrying K9. She was glad of the warmth and comparative comfort of the TARDIS, and immediately reached for the lever that closed the big double doors. Barclow's low moaning wind and biting cold were finally shut out.

She set K9 down and turned with a despairing sigh to the Doctor, who was scattering objects from his useful pile all over the floor. 'I hardly think you're going to find Stokes in there,' she said, still unable to fathom the reasons for his distress. 'Besides, he can't just have walked in.'

'Doors are an irrelevance to some people,' the Doctor snapped back. He peered through the inner door and grunted; a set of muddy bootprints trailed away down the corridor. 'Just as I thought. He's probably gone to find a bed.'

For the first time Romana caught a little of his anxiety. 'But how did he pa.s.s through our security?' She s.h.i.+vered. Theoretically, the TARDIS was impenetrable.