Part 4 (2/2)

It was the Doctor's turn to address the Inquisitor. 'My lady, for some reason I cannot yet fathom, I can recall little of the events on Thoros-Beta neither my own actions nor the reasons why creatures like Sil acted as they did. May I see what the Matrix has to show, including all of the background material, so that I may see the truth of what happened to myself and why it is that Peri is no longer with me.'

The Valeyard jumped to his feet, his spare body trembling with rage. 'Preposterous timewasting. We will be here for months! And as for his oh-so-convenient loss of memory...!'

'Be quiet!' the Inquisitor regarded the accused and accuser thoughtfully. The time of her deliberation lengthened tantalisingly.

Finally, when the Inquisitor spoke, her voice was even and une motional in her judgement. 'I will allow all Matrix material to be viewed by the court. To take all the lives of a Time Lord is without precedent. If that is to be the fate of the Doctor then it must not be said that the verdict for execution was reached without every effort being made to reach the truth.'

'My lady.' The Doctor bowed. He did not care for the references to execution but he was strangely elated. Now he would see what it was he had done. Good or evil, at least now he would know why he was here on trial and what had happened to Peri.

The screen of the Matrix glowed vibrantly once more and revealed not the scene of the Doctor exploring Crozier's laboratory but another location showing Kiv and Sil busily engaged in their Profit Room. Kiv was droning into a contract transposer. 'In the event of a major mining discovery, our lease from the Thordonians will be for thirty years at a royalty rate of forty per cent.' Kiv's large head lifted on a wave of pain. 'Or did I mean forty years at thirty per cent, Sil?'

'Thirty at forty is better, Magnificence.'

'Well, anyway, it will be enough to keep you in Marsh Minnows... aah!'

'My lord...' Sil watched his superior rock to and fro in a vain attempt to escape the effects of brain compression.

'My head...' Kiv's mouth opened with the agony he was experiencing.

'It will soon pa.s.s,' Sil said.

The heavy head lifted wearily as the attack began to abate a little. 'The pressure grows worse each time.

Something must be done or soon you will be hailed as Magnificence.'

Sil looked suitably abashed at the awful prospect. 'Long may that day be postponed, great Kiv.'

At that moment the doors of the Profit Room were flung open. Horrified at the intrusion, Sil twisted on his water tank. The sight of Crozier and the guards crowding in caused him to escalate into hysteria. 'You must not enter the sacred room of commerce while profit is in progress!'

Crozier ignored Sil and addressed Kiv bluntly. 'There is trouble.'

'Concerning what?'

Crozier's grey eyes stared towards the leader of the Mentors.

'What has happened?' Kiv spoke quietly in contrast to the bombast of his a.s.sistant.

'The Raak is dead.' Crozier's tone was cold, his voice flat. 'Killed by intruders.'

Frax stepped forward. 'They claimed the Raak attacked them.'

Sil waved a short green arm imperiously. 'Then manufacture another experiment!'

Crozier gave him a look of utter contempt. 'That is not easily done. Neither is it the point of my concern.'

The Matrona spoke next. 'The Raak was no longer aggressive.'

'So?' Sil did not understand the problem.

Patiently, Crozier outlined his dilemma. 'If the Raak, unprovoked, did attack these intruders, then he might have regressed genetically. Until I know, until I can question the strangers in every detail, I cannot guarantee the success of your brain transference, Lord Kiv.'

'You must relieve my suffering!' Kiv's voice, at the thought that hope of relief might be taken from him, had an edge of panic.

'My Lord...' the Matrona intervened. Sometimes only her soothing tones could calm the stricken leader. 'We have hopes that the radical treatment you require will be successful, Lord.'

Jealously, Sil attempted to block the influence of the Matrona's encouragement. Glaring at the scientist and his a.s.sistant, he adopted a hectoring manner. 'So much depends on the life of Lord Kiv. The making of mega wealth for the funding of your work, Crozier.' The little red eyes, buried in the green scaled face, gleamed when scoring this last point.

Crozier refused to be budged from his position of scientific objectivity. 'I must be certain. I must know that the chances of success in the brain transplantation are as favourable as possible.'

Sil turned his attention to the officer of the guard while Kiv once more hung his head as another surge of pain and nausea spread through his mottled brown head and body.

'Where are these strangers?' Sil asked.

Frax swallowed, he had feared this question, 'Escaped, Mentor Sil.'

'Sil, take charge!' Kiv's voice rasped out. 'Stupid guards, moronic bearers, incompetent officers! I will be dead as that Raak if I wait for them to find the intruders.. His reedy voice faltered with the anguish of further neural compression. 'Find them at once! Before I perish, then where will you all be? Huh? Leaderless and poor poor!'

Sil trembled at the prospect. He did not care too much about Kiv but the prospect of losing Kiv's mastery of stock-market manipulation galvanised him into action and soon he was spitting out orders that sent all available officers, guards and bearers scurrying in a desperate hunt for Peri and the Doctor.

'Ugh!' Peri turned away from a shelf that contained the pickled entrails of a giant swamp maggot. Next she stared through a magnifying panel that was focused on the open brain that had so engrossed the Matrona and Crozier an hour earlier.

While Peri wandered from one disturbing sight to the next the Doctor had been occupying himself in tracing the technology that was linked to the helmet enclosing the head of the inert warrior.

A movement on the operating table caught Peri's eye.

'He's coming round.'

'Not necessarily,' said the Doctor, engrossed in the complex combinations of neural formulae that flashed across the display panei of the electroencephalograph.

There was much to understand in the pacification system, but finally the process began to make sense. The Doctor decided to take a calculated risk by lessening what he decided must be the power impulse into the helmet.

'What's going on, Doctor?'

The Doctor indicated a neural impulse pa.s.sing across the oscilloscope. 'Not sure. But that brainwave belongs to that chap... I've lessened the...' Before the Doctor could finish, the doar to the laboratory was suddenly thrust open.

Peri and the Doctor turned to face half a dozen phasers held by black-uniformed guards who then stepped aside to allow a small green Mentor to be borne towards them by his muscular bearers.

'How nice to see a familiar mug again.' The Doctor smiled at Sil, then nodded a courteous greeting towards Crozier who had entered immediately after Sil.

Sil smirked in satisfaction at his capture. 'Doctor... and, ah, yes, your revoltingly ugly a.s.sistant.' He stared at Peri.

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