Part 39 (1/2)

'h.e.l.lo, Doctor,' he said feebly.

The Doctor stalked over. 'I want a word with you.'

The TARDIS hung in suspense in the s.p.a.ce-time vortex. Its mighty time engines were held in stasis, their power held back by the Doctor's operation of the override switch. The indescribable maelstrom shrieked about it.

'It wasn't actually what you'd call a dirty deal,' said Stokes. He addressed Romana. 'Most of my, er, very long story was true, my dear. I only left out a teensy bit.'

'The teensy bit about the Black Guardian,' she replied bitterly.

'Is that what's he's called?' mused Stokes. 'I suppose it's apposite. No, the first thing I knew of him was just after my court case. I was landed with costs that wiped out my fortune, as I mentioned earlier, so I decided to go for a drink. I had several. In fact, I had a lot more than several. I think I b.u.mped my head. And that's when I saw him, this fellow in black with a bird on his head.'

The Doctor nodded grimly to Romana. 'He can contact lower primates only when their minds are knocked into an altered state.'

Stokes flushed. 'Who are you calling a lower primate?'

'You,' said the Doctor. 'Go on.'

'Well, it seemed like a dream afterwards,' Stokes continued. 'In a nutsh.e.l.l, he offered me the chance for some success. In exchange for which I had to provide a certain service.

'To betray and trap us,' accused Romana.

'No,' Stokes said finally. 'Honestly, no. I wouldn't have agreed to that, would I? And in fact the thing that made me think it really had been a dream was the ludicrous nature of the service I was asked to perform.'

'Which was?' the Doctor prompted.

Stokes pulled his hammer from his pocket. 'There would come a time, he said, when I had to smash something up. He didn't even say what, only that I'd know what it was when the time came, and that I should carry this wherever I went. And that it was something to do with you, Doctor, some sort of personal feud, and that I shouldn't mention him to you or Romana if ever we should meet. Of course I thought it was all subconscious rambling on my part.' He pointed to the crystal in Romana's hand. 'Until I found that in my pocket when I woke up. Occasionally it gave me directions. It pushed me towards the cryogenic process, for example, when I first considered it.

Very odd.' He sighed. 'Otherwise, everything I told you was true. So I can hardly be painted as the villain of this piece.' Determined not to feel cowed, he stuck his chest out. 'In fact, we all seem to have come out of it all right.

We're going to Dellah, now, I think you'll find, where you can drop me off.

And then you can take your feud with this Guardian chap elsewhere.' He extended his hand. 'No harm done, eh?'

The Doctor shot him a venomous look. 'Stokes, you've been very stupid, even for a lower primate.'

Romana's expression was as gloomy. 'You've been manipulated as part of a plan to bring the Doctor to this point. A string of small events, of small choices, calculated to reach this moment.'

Stokes frowned and looked at the central column, which was grinding ferociously, as if the energies trapped inside were straining desperately to escape. 'But we are going to Dellah, aren't we?'

'Yes, we're going to Dellah,' cried the Doctor, 'and we're dragging along with us a Hive of bloodcrazed insects that given the right conditions could become one of the deadliest life forms in the cosmos.' He pointed to a particular lever on the console. 'We've both been fooled, Stokes. And even when I realized I was being manipulated I was being manipulated. The Black Guardian timed our movements precisely. You set the coordinates, I rushed in, picked up the Hive and dematerialized.'

'So?' demanded Stokes. 'I think I must be missing the point.'

'This is the trap,' Romana explained. 'The Doctor was rushed, made to panic. We were going to drop the Hive off into a black hole, right away.'

She pointed to the materialization control. 'If we materialize here, it'll be released into populated s.p.a.ce at a crucial point in history. It'll destroy millions and reproduce without restriction. The web of time will be fractured irreparably.' She shuddered. 'And we'll be responsible.'

'No,' said the Doctor. 'I shall be responsible.'

The TARDIS rocked as a great shadow fell across its doors.

The shutters of the scanner screen slid open unbidden. The Doctor whipped round from his moment of introspection and blinked at the figure that was revealed. The imperturbable face could have been blasted out of solid rock; the ermine-lined robes were glossy and seemed to contain in their folds every dark thought the universe had ever contained; the headdress was mounted by a raven whose eyes were narrowed in pure, piercing hatred.

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'We were just talking about you.'

'That's him, isn't it?' Stokes asked.

'If it isn't it's somebody wearing his hat,' said the Doctor.

The Black Guardian's voice was as stentorian as he remembered, a rumble that seemed to shake the very fabric of time. 'Doctor,' he said, 'the time has come for us to do business.'

'I don't think so.'

The Guardian gestured with one ma.s.sive hand to the TARDIS console.

'The choice is clear. Press the lever and condemn the universe to chaos, or -' his eyes narrowed and his lips twisted '- remain suspended here in the vortex forever.'

The Doctor ambled over to the scanner and peered up at the face of his greatest enemy. 'You've been very clever, I must say. I know that to an elemental being like yourself the compliments of a mere mortal like myself must not count for much, but I'd like to congratulate you anyway. I should have seen your hand in it from the beginning.' He raised his voice. 'What better place than the end of the universe to set your trap? Your opposite number is at his weakest there and couldn't intervene.'

'Precisely,' said the Black Guardian. 'You walked into the situation on Metralubit as you always do, Doctor. It was easy for me to predict your moves.' He indicated Stokes. 'Using this creature and others as my players.' A smile cracked his unearthly features. 'I have been tracing your path through all time and s.p.a.ce, your past and your future, choosing my moment. I was at your side when you fought the wizard of Avalon, when you united the Rhumon and the Menoptera against the Animus, when you brought down Lady Ruath and her vampire hordes and when you fought the Timewyrm on the surface of the moon.'

'I'm not sure you should be telling me some of that,' said the Doctor. 'I haven't done it yet.' He wagged a reproving finger up at the screen. 'You're dabbling with the forces of continuity.'

'I care nothing for such abstract concepts,' snorted the Guardian.

'You've disrupted our timeline, broken the First Law,' accused Romana.

'The consequences could be catastrophic. Not to mention very confusing.'

'Catastrophe and confusion is his job,' the Doctor remarked.