FEED CONNECTING
FEED CONNECTED
FEED STABLE
OWING TO THE RESTRICTIONS OF PSYCHIC PAPER WE ARE UNABLE TO PRINT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING WORDS:
… … … … … Oops, hello, sorry! Here you all are, again. Just, reminiscing. I’m an old man, memory is my television. Though, to be honest, so is my television.
Did you enjoy that one? No, hush, rhetorical. You can all go and write your reviews online, I don’t want you wasting space here.
Zygon prose is always fascinating, I find. I can’t get enough of picturing those big sloppy red hands wrapped round pencils. Though, in this case, that’s not how it really worked. I’ll explain later, I promise. Unless I forget, or can’t be bothered, or I happen to notice a shiny thing.
I was just thinking about Alistair again. I do that a lot, because I enjoy smiling. I told him I was thinking of writing this book, of course, and I thought he’d be pleased. Instead he gave a sort of grim nod, and we carried on playing Risk in silence for a bit. (He always got to be the Daleks, which was a bit unfair.)
‘What’s wrong?’ I said eventually.
‘It’s a security breach,’ he said, through his crossest moustache.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I protested. ‘You left Italy undefended.’
‘No, your book. Your book is a clear breach of security. There’s classified material in there.’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ I said. ‘And I have a clever plan.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Really?’
‘I’m going to write “fiction” on the back.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘No, seriously. It will be released as fiction, and sold only in the fiction departments of bookshops. That way, everyone will think it’s not true.’
‘But it’s not fiction, is it? It’s fact.’
‘Fact, fiction, same thing,’ I told him.
‘For God’s sake, no it isn’t!’ He thumped the table with his big, silly fist, and all the little Daleks on the board jumped at once, like they’d had a fright. I think I laughed for five minutes.
‘Fact and fiction are not the same thing. Please don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘Oh, Alistair, think about it. The Universe is vast, and it goes on for a very long time. And do you know what that means? It means that everything that can happen will happen somewhere eventually—that’s the rule. That means every story you can make up, will actually happen one day, somewhere in space and time. The only difference between a factual book and a fictional book is that factual books are written after the event, and fictional books are written before the event. Which makes fiction much more useful, don’t you see? When you’re writing facts, you’re just copying down. When you write fiction, you’re seeing into the future.’
We just sat there for a bit, and he did a lot of glaring. I bent down and picked up the Dalek he’d thrown and put it back on the board. He’d got me right on the nose, though I have to admit it’s not a difficult target.
‘Why do the Doctor Papers exist?’ he asked. ‘Why write up that one adventure? Why not any of the others?’
I’d known he was going to ask that question, and I’d slightly dreaded it. ‘To reflect, perhaps,’ I said. ‘Or to remember. The timelines were all tangled, it needed to be set down before it all faded from memory, possibly as a cheat sheet for next time. Though, of course, there’s not a lot of use in a cheat sheet you don’t know you have, because you can’t remember writing it.’
I was standing at the window now, looking out over the grounds. Was I hiding my face, I wondered. I didn’t like him seeing me unsure or troubled.
‘There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’ said Alistair.
The sun was just starting to set, and a mother was leading a small boy along the path, away from the sad old building. I could hear their feet crunching on the gravel. The boy was clutching the string of a red balloon that bobbed along above them both, as if trying to escape. I stared at the little hand, with the string wrapped around it.
‘The Doctor had to keep hold,’ I said.
‘Hold of what,’ asked Alistair.
‘The Doctor.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
I sighed. How to explain? ‘It wasn’t an adventure,’ I said. ‘It was a day. A day that went on for a very long time, and happened over and over again.’ The boy had twisted round to look back at the building. I thought about all the windows he could see from down there, and wondered if he was thinking about all the people behind them, tucked up in their beds, fading slowly from their lives. I gave him a smile and a wave, to show him it wasn’t so bad, but he just turned to look ahead again, and kept marching away down the path. Quite right, I thought. Get away from here, have a laugh, play a game, make mistakes, and never, ever stop running. Time enough for this place, I thought. Time enough.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Alistair. ‘Not an adventure, a day—what is that supposed to mean?’
I looked at the sunset, and pulled myself together. ‘It was the day the Doctor understood who the Doctor always had to be.’
Alistair didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then a Dalek pinged off the window next to my head.
… ah, I’m sorry. Lost in memories, I did warn you. So very old now, hard to keep hold of myself. Where were we? Ah, yes, Chapter Five. Written by the Doctor this time. Ah, but which one? Which one?
‘At first I thought she just fancied me,’ said Clara Oswald, and then broke off. It was beyond strange, she thought. She looked around the three of them: the grumpy old one who seemed to carry the smoke of battle with him; the angry, pacing one, who knew he was cooler than the other two; and her one, who was currently lost in contemplation of his own knuckle joints. As long she’d known him, he’d seemed to view his fingers with a degree of suspicion, and sometimes even jumped when they moved. It was ridiculous, she thought, looking again from one to the other, but somehow you could tell, without even trying, they were all the same man. So different, and yet all so clearly and obviously him. She couldn’t even give them different names in her head. They were just the Doctor, the Doctor, and the Doctor.
‘Clara, you okay?’ asked the Doctor, and she had to check it was her one.
‘Yes, sorry …’
‘You were explaining about Kate Lethbridge-Stewart?’ said the pacing one.
‘Yeah, yeah I know.’ She forced herself to concentrate. ‘Okay, so at first I thought she just fancied me, or something. It was honestly weird. Every time I said anything, or even just made a face, I could feel her just looking at me. It was kind of like when someone thinks you’re hot. You know, when someone’s into you? And every time you laugh or speak, or do anything, you can feel their eyes just glom on to you? You know what I mean??’
‘Not, I’m afraid, a solitary syllable,’ sighed the Doctor.
‘I find people always act like that,’ grinned the Doctor.
‘Yeah, I get that all the time too,’ frowned the Doctor. ‘Especially, when I knock over things.’
The Doctor glanced at the other two, with unconcealed contempt, then turned back to Clara. ‘Am I to understand, from that apparently random collection of words, that you thought this Kate person was … attracted to you?’ His face had creased into a sort of fastidious regret, as if these matters had become slightly distasteful to him at his time of life. The other two rolled their eyes and turned away.
‘Well, yes, I guess.’
He nodded. ‘And then you concluded she had to be an alien duplicate. I see.’
‘No, I concluded maybe we should get a drink sometime. But when I thought about it, something was wrong. Because when we first met, she’d barely looked at me. So what was different now? People don’t suddenly start fancying you out of nowhere, because you happen to hang around for a bit. Except in romcoms. Written by stalkers.’ A succession of baffled winces had passed over the old man’s face. She suppressed a smile. ‘So when she stepped out for a moment, well, I watched what she did.’
‘Good, intelligent work—it’s a delight to meet you, Miss … Oswald, wasn’t it?’ said the Doctor. When he smiled, his eyes almost disappeared in the crinkles.
‘Call me Clara.’
‘Dangerous, but proactive, Clara—I approve. So you witnessed the Zygon transformation. An alarming sight, I know.’
‘Bit weird.’
‘You are to be congratulated on your bravery and your insight. First class! I needed a few more men like you in the field.’
‘Down boy,’ said the other two Doctors simultaneously.
‘So I ran for it,’ continued Clara, ‘but there was nowhere to go. Then her phone beeped—she’d left it in a sort of dock on the wall—and I saw she’d got a text. A photo.’ She pointed to the numerals the Doctor had carved into the stone. ‘Of those numbers, right there. So I figured it was the activation code for this.’ She held up the vortex manipulator, on her wrist. ‘And boom, here I am.’ She prodded the charred leather. ‘Think it’s blown out, though.’
‘Excellent. You have done extremely well. Whichever of these young men is travelling with you, they have made an excellent choice.’ She noticed he was wearing a bandolier round his chest—it suited him, she thought, but one day he was going to wear a bow tie. She glanced over to where that bow tie was now, and saw the face above it was looking at her, smiling.
‘You okay, Clara?’ he said.
‘Just getting my head straight. So both of these guys are you?’ she asked him.
The Doctor glanced at the Doctors. He shrugged and smiled. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Previous editions. Captains Grumpy and Swagger. My exes. Well not my exes. But my exes if you see what I mean. We don’t actually know why—’
‘I came here tracking a migratory Zygon hive,’ the Doctor interrupted. He was still pacing, faster now, as if his feet were getting angrier by the step. ‘But according to what you’ve just told us, there are Zygons active in the twenty-first century too. How does that work? They don’t have time travel.’
‘You boys seem to have forgotten what the Time War was like,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘Gallifreyan technology got stolen all the time. Plenty of people ended up with time travel, who weren’t supposed to.’
‘So!’ said Clara. ‘Three of you in one cell. Three Doctors in one little room—and none of you thought to try the door? Not one of you, not even a little bit?’
There was a complicated succession of glances among the Doctors that seemed to suggest they were all about to start blaming each other, before each of them figured out how pointless that would be.
‘It’s hardly our fault,’ said her Doctor. ‘The door should’ve been locked. Why wasn’t it locked?’
‘Because,’ came a clear, high voice, ‘I was fascinated to see what you would do upon escaping.’ They all turned to the doorway. There was a whirl of gold in the shadows beyond it and a flame-haired woman in a blazing dress was stepping into the room.
Clara stared. There was only one person this could be.
‘Though you seem remarkably disinclined to go anywhere,’ Elizabeth said, raking them all with a glance. ‘What timidity is this? One recalls a better class of prisoner.’ She skewered the Doctor with a look. ‘What say you, my betrothed?’
‘I have standards,’ he said. ‘I only escape through locked doors. And by the way, dear, don’t call me your betrothed. I proposed to Queen Elizabeth, not a Zygon in a big dress.’
She stared at him for a moment, then stepped closer to him, examining his face, as if for the first time. ‘I understand you have a fondness for this world,’ she said at last. ‘It’s time, I think, you saw what is going to happen to it.’ She turned and swept out through the door. ‘This way,’ she called behind her. ‘It is dead of night, and something is stirring below England.’
Elizabeth led them deeper and deeper into the Tower. She walked at speed through the pitch darkness, never missing a step or a turning. When one of the Doctors had attempted to light the way with his screwdriver, she had snapped at him to switch it off. ‘We do not wish to attract attention. If your feet are unsure in the shadows, follow me—I do not suffer the inconvenience of mortal eyes.’
Clara plucked at her Doctor’s arm, and only realised she’d got the wrong one when she heard his voice. ‘Yes, my dear?’
‘I’ve been down here before,’ she whispered.
There was a fruity old chuckle. ‘So you’ve just been telling us—but in fact you haven’t. Technically, you haven’t been down here yet.’
‘But this is the way to the Black Archive.’
‘No. It will be. The Black Archive will not exist for hundreds of years. We are about to see where UNIT chose to build it. Which raises intriguing questions, don’t you think?’
Ahead of them, Clara’s Doctor had been listening. ‘More like the red archive now.’ He was pointing. At the end of the corridor, there was a door; blood-red light spilled round its frame. In front of it, Elizabeth was turning to face them, her hand on the handle.
‘I suggest you compose yourselves. You are about to see the darkest secret in the Kingdom. Beyond this door, a seed is being planted which, in times to come, will flower into the doom of all England.’
She opened the door.
It was like stepping into a giant mouth. First there was a hot, wet reek, like rotting orchids, then the walls and floor curved round them, pink and wet and alive, like a tongue tumoured with suckers and hanging nodules. The Zygons themselves were barely visible for a moment, slow and silent in the rising steam of their flesh-base, like so many foetuses drifting round a womb.
Foetuses with teeth, thought Clara, as one of the Zygons turned towards them. Even from a distance, its tiny eyes glittered. As it saw them, its lips drew back in seeming rage—but then its gaze fell on Elizabeth, and it appeared to hesitate. After a moment, it made what could be mistaken for a small bow.
‘Attend your given tasks,’ commanded the Queen. ‘There is much to be done if England is to be ours.’ The Zygon turned back to its work.
‘Zygons,’ said the Doctor, straightening his bow tie, as he always did in the sight of the enemy. ‘A whole Zygon hive.’
‘Yeah, Zygons, what have I been telling you,’ replied the Doctor. ‘I followed them here, that was my mission.’
‘We know all about your mission! Venom sacs in the tongue.’
‘Shut up!’
They were interrupted by an ill-tempered grunt from the Doctor. ‘The Zygons lost their home world in the first year of the Time War. Perhaps, if we could all stop wittering on, we might receive an explanation as to what they’re doing here.’
‘A new home is required,’ said Elizabeth.
‘So they want this one?’ asked Clara.
‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘Far too primitive.’
‘Yes, that makes sense,’ grumped the Doctor. ‘Zygons do insist on a certain amount of comfort.’ His mouth creased on the word ‘comfort’ as if the idea was more disturbing to him than conquest. He looked to Clara. ‘So, my dear—the walls, what do you observe?’
‘They’re like … flesh, or something. Wet flesh, like this place is made of gums.’
‘Quite, yes, very well put. A living support chamber for the Zygons. Once abandoned, however, it will calcify into a shiny black rock-like substance. Ring any bells?’
‘The walls of the Black Archive.’
‘Precisely, Miss Oswald. They carved their idiot archive out of the sediment of this place. The Black Archive not only contains alien technology, it is built out of it.’
Elizabeth was now staring at him, stony-eyed. ‘Old man, why do you treat your current danger as if it were an educational opportunity?’
‘Because, ma’am, I have never encountered a danger that wasn’t.’
Her eyes narrowed, but she was interrupted as another Zygon came padding over to them. Up close, the smell was overpowering and Clara felt her eyes stinging. The Zygon gave a little bow to Elizabeth and spoke in a scraping whisper: ‘Commander, if I may ask—why are these humans here?’
‘I say they should be, therefore they are. Just because I am presently in human form, do not presume to question my judgement, or I shall put out your eyes. As you know, I have already had to do that once today, and I dislike to repeat myself.’
‘My profound apologies, Commander.’
‘Noted. How many have been processed now?’
‘Almost all, Commander. I am the last of the invasion brood.’
‘Very good,’ nodded Elizabeth. ‘I will remain with the others to ensure your safety. It is time you too were translated.’
The Zygon lowered its head in assent, and Elizabeth placed a hand on its arm, as if comforting it.
‘Do not fear this strange world you go to now,’ she said. ‘For you will be the commander there, not I. It is my place only to open the door. You shall step through it into glory.’
If a Zygon could look moved, this one did. ‘Commander,’ it breathed.
‘To your mission, brave voyager,’ she said, sterner now. ‘There are humans present, as there will be in the future—you must maintain appearances at all times.’
‘It shall be done,’ hissed the Zygon. It began making its way towards the wall behind them. Turning to watch, Clara saw what she had missed before. All the landscape paintings from the Under Gallery were arranged haphazardly round the door through which they had entered, each of them gripped in place by a fibrous sucker extruding from the flesh wall. ‘Landscapes with figures,’ said the Doctor, next to her now. ‘You see? Those are the same paintings we saw in the gallery, but with figures still in them.’
‘Not as bad as you made out,’ she said.
‘Who isn’t?’
‘You weren’t.’ She nodded to the old man who was now examining the paintings.
‘Observe this, Doctor,’ Elizabeth was saying. ‘I believe you will find it fascinating.’
The Zygon had stepped towards a fibrous nodule growing out of the floor. The nodule ended in a ring of fingers, which gripped hold of a gleaming, silver sphere.
The Zygon placed its hand on the sphere. There was a rapid series of clicks, the air around the Zygon seemed to glitch for a moment, and then the whole Zygon simply folded out of existence and was gone.
‘Well, what do you think? Does my betrothed approve?’ asked Elizabeth, slipping her arm into the Doctor’s.
‘That’s Time Lord technology,’ the Doctor snapped back at her. ‘Stolen Time Lord technology.’
‘And to think, you date these people,’ said the Doctor.
‘You boys really don’t have memories, do you?’ sighed the Doctor, querulous as ever. ‘As I have already reminded you, lots of our technology got stolen during the war, it was one of the principal dangers. Perhaps if you pair spent less time flapping your hands about and posing dramatically you might develop some kind of useful recall.’
‘But where did the Zygon go?’ asked Clara.
‘Look to the paintings,’ said Elizabeth.
As Clara looked, one of the landscapes glowed. The lumpen figure of the Zygon was materialising on a hillside.
‘That’s him? That’s the Zygon, in the picture now.’
‘It’s not a picture, my dear,’ said the Doctor, crinkling a smile at her again—the old man seemed to enjoy explaining things to her. ‘It is, in fact, a Stasis Cube. Time Lord art, you see? Frozen instants in time, bigger on the inside. Like a three-dimensional photocopy of a four-dimensional event. But as you can see, you could store living matter inside it too. Though why would you want to?’
‘Suspended animation!’ shouted the Doctor. He turned to Elizabeth, who was still wrapped around his arm. ‘Oh, that’s very good. First class. Your Zygons all pop inside the pictures, wait a few centuries till the planet is a bit more interesting, then out they come. Blimey, you lot—you won’t invade anywhere that doesn’t have decent broadband.’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ yelled the Doctor, his hands now whizzing about at each other, as if he were signing an aerial dogfight for the deaf. ‘You see, Clara? They’re stored in the paintings in the Under Gallery, like Cup-a-Soups. Except you don’t add water, you add time. You add time-water to the painting-soup. If you can picture that. Nobody could picture that. Forget I said Cup-a-Soups.’
‘Okay, I get it,’ said Clara. ‘Back in the future, when we went to the Under Gallery, the Zygons decided the world was finally worth conquering. Basically the alarm went off, and they climbed out of the paintings.’
The Doctor was now disengaging his arm from Elizabeth’s. He looked at her, cold now. ‘Right, well, seeing as that’s all settled, it’s time I told you something,’ he said. ‘Do you know why I know you’re a fake, Queenie? Because the fact is, you’re such a bad copy. It’s not just the smell, or the unconvincing hair, or the atrocious teeth, or the eyes just a bit too close together or the breath that could stun a horse—it’s because my Elizabeth, the real Elizabeth would never have been stupid enough to reveal her own plan. Honestly, why would you do that?’
For a moment, Elizabeth said nothing. Then she leaned in a little closer to them all, and lowering her voice, spoke in the sweetest tones. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘it is not my plan, and I am the real Elizabeth.’
There was a silence. For the first, second, and third time in his life, the Doctor could find absolutely nothing to say.
‘So, it would appear that my Kingdom is infested with demons that may steal the faces of mortal men and that England is doomed to suffer their dominion in the years to come; that the man whose proposal of marriage I have just accepted is a spy from another world who believes me to be a demon in disguise; and that the odour of my breath might stun a horse. I am of the firm opinion that this has not been a good picnic.’
They were in the Queen’s bedchamber, and Clara was amused at the way the Doctor had arranged himself around the room. The old man sat in a chair at the side, with the air of a presiding dignitary. He glanced around from time to time, seeming either faintly amused or faintly disgusted by everything he saw—except when he looked at Clara, when he always crinkled a smile and nodded. This hated phantom from the Doctor’s past seemed to like her and, to her surprise, she discovered she liked him too. Just as she thought that, he glanced at her and then away again, as if he had overheard her. She knew her Doctor would sometimes take peeks inside her head, and wondered if his previous selves ever did that too.
The Doctor who had proposed to Elizabeth was striding about the room, agitated, his hands rammed in his pockets, like a sulking schoolboy. Dear God, that man could pace. It was as if every floor he stood on was too hot for his feet. He was issuing a constant stream of explanations and excuses and apologies, which no one seemed to be listening to, least of all him.
Her Doctor was sprawled on the bed, as if exhausted by the efforts of his previous self, eyes shut, and apparently dozing. She wondered what he remembered of being in this room, twice before. Mostly he seemed surprised by what was happening around him, but now and then she caught him glancing at the others, clearly haunted by a memory. She lay on the bed next to him, with her head propped on her hand, and her eyes kept returning to the remarkable woman who had brought them all here.
The Queen had arranged herself on the window seat, with the rising sun behind her. Somewhere, a portrait painter was missing a majestic opportunity.
‘Yes, yes, okay,’ said the Doctor, suddenly opening his eyes, and interrupting the flow of excuses, ‘But you still haven’t explained what happened to the other one. Where’s the Zygon version of you?’
‘I was talking!’ said the Doctor.
‘You still are,’ replied the Doctor.
‘My twin is dead in the forest—as I believe I told you.’
‘You didn’t tell us how she got that way,’ said the Doctor, wriggling up to a sitting position on the bed. ‘They don’t just pop like balloons, Zygons.’
‘One begs to differ,’ said Elizabeth. She had produced a dagger from somewhere inside her dress. ‘Whatever a balloon is.’ She flicked a look to the Doctor. ‘I was having a picnic with a strange man, naturally I took precautions.’
‘I took sandwiches.’
‘My dear, you took a Zygon and here we all are. Once I returned here, the other Zygon creatures never even considered that it was me who survived the conflict rather than their own commander. The arrogance that typifies their kind.’
‘What, Zygons?’ asked Clara.
‘Men,’ said Elizabeth.
Clara grinned. ‘And you actually killed one of those things. Like, in hand-to-hand combat?’
‘I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman—but at the time, so did the Zygon. I was therefore able to take the command of the others, without difficulty—’
‘Sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait!’ protested the Doctor, stopping pacing for a moment. ‘You’re saying you just took command of an entire Zygon hive from outer space?’
‘Whatever their aspect, they are soldiers. Like all soldiers they have the character defect of obedience, which they mistake for the higher purpose of duty. It is easy to command those accustomed to orders. In many ways it is a kindness.’
‘But from outer space,’ he repeated.
The Doctor was now chortling away on his chair. ‘I did notice, your Majesty, that they appeared to have taken up bowing. Haven’t seen Zygons do that before.’
‘I confess that was my innovation.’
He laughed even harder. ‘Your Majesty, I am greatly looking forward to meeting you.’
Elizabeth glanced briefly at him; then she looked again, harder. She pointed to the gleaming sphere that rested on the writing desk next to where the Doctor was sitting. ‘That is from the Zygon lair.’
‘Yes, your Majesty. I stole it as we left.’ He picked it up and tossed it in his hand. ‘It belongs to my people. A family heirloom, you might say.’
‘But when did you steal it? I saw nothing.’
‘With respect, your Majesty, that is what you may expect to see when I steal something.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Your arrogance is familiar,’ she said, then rounded on the Doctor, who was still reclining on her bed. ‘As is yours, sir—you help yourself to the comforts my bedchamber, as if you belong here. I feel there is something of importance I am failing to perceive.’ She looked around the three men with a gathering frown.
‘Okay,’ said Clara, to break the silence. ‘But if you’re in charge of the Zygons, why didn’t you just order them off the planet, or something?’
‘That would have been unexpected, and therefore questioned. One should not stimulate one’s enemies into thought, while in the midst of a deception. In any event, the greater number of them were determined to put themselves inside those strange pictures, where I understand they intend to remain for many hundreds of years. I encouraged haste in this project, in the knowledge that we would be safer with them gone. I have resources enough to dispose of the few that have stayed behind.’
‘No, no, no!’ said the Doctor, ‘Come on, I know you, you’ve tortured me. You don’t dispose of people! Those creatures are stranded here, you have to find a way to make peace.’
‘The only peace they will find on English soil is underneath it.’
‘No, I forbid this—’
‘You forbid it, sir? Be less bold. Your eyes are pretty enough where they are, and I have a sufficiency of earrings. Henceforth please try to remember—’ her voice rose to a bellow—‘I am in charge here!’
For a moment it seemed to Clara that the windows rattled. Then, in the silence that followed, Elizabeth refolded her hands in her lap, and her smile resumed its former sweetness.
‘Hang on. Eyes,’ said Clara. ‘Downstairs you said you’d put out a Zygon’s eyes …’
‘It was a disciplinary matter, I had to behave as their commander.’
‘That’s what Zygons do?’
‘I have no idea, I was forced to improvise.’ She turned her gaze on the Doctor. ‘Can I expect you to do your duty, beloved?’
‘Depends on what you think my duty is.’
‘I will deal with the Zygons that remain here, and arrange for the paintings to be locked away, where they may do no harm. You will travel to the future and deal with whatever devilry they intend to unleash, upon emerging.’
The Doctors exchanged glances, clearly worried. ‘I may be a dab hand at a picnic,’ said the Doctor, at last, ‘but who said I can travel in time?’
‘You did. You have made many flippant remarks about other times you have visited. Flippancy is so often a concealed truth flaunted by an over-confident man. And I seem to be surrounded by three of those.’ She now rose to her feet. ‘Doctor!’ she said to the man on the chair. ‘Doctor!’ she said to the man sitting on the bed. ‘And Doctor,’ she said to the man, now staring back at her astonishment. ‘The future of my Kingdom is imperilled. Can I rely on your service?’
‘You’ve let this place go a bit,’ grouched the Doctor as he entered the TARDIS with the Doctor.
‘It’s not my TARDIS, it’s his one,’ replied the Doctor, nodding to the Doctor, who was racing round the console, slamming levers, and powering up. ‘I’ve refurbed a couple of times since this version,’ he went on. ‘Dumped the coral, went a bit metal, you’ll love it.’
The Doctor grunted in reply. ‘There better be more round things,’ he muttered.
Elizabeth had lost no time in making the necessary arrangements. The TARDIS had been transported from the forest, where it had been parked for several months, and after a brief ceremony, the Queen had sped them all on their way. ‘England depends on you. Remember your promise, Doctor!’2
‘So where are we going?’ asked Clara, as the TARDIS roared into life. ‘The Black Archive? Because there’s a Zygon in there right now. Well, right then. Well, in a few hundred years.’
The TARDIS lurched and they all grabbed on to the console.
‘Unfortunately,’ said the Doctor at the controls, ‘the Black Archive is the one place on Earth we can’t go.’
‘But I thought the TARDIS could go anywhere.’
‘Anywhere,’ he replied, ‘except the Black Archive.’
The Doctor found himself a chair at the side of this disgracefully grubby version of his TARDIS—really, was a quick dab with a sponge out of the question?—and contemplated the two boys, racing around the console, squeaking and bouncing like cartoon boffins. Really, he kept thinking. Those?
One of them was wittering on about phasing the TARDIS through the sub-dimensions, and the other one was disagreeing, because they’d be better off adapting the chameleon circuit, but none of it was worth listening to. Nothing would suffice, the Doctor knew. For these boys, the Time War was too long ago. They’d forgotten that TARDIS-proofing worked.
He sighed. Why had the Moment brought him here? What was the purpose? Seeing his future had changed nothing about his predicament. Soon he would have to return to the barn, and commit mass murder, and end the war. And then, apparently, he would descend into his second and third childhoods. Nothing had been altered by this visit, except that he now understood that he was doomed to survive.
The Doctor frowned. And yet something had changed. Something inside him was different now, but for the moment he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
‘Why can’t the TARDIS get into the Black Archive?’ asked Clara. She had joined him, sitting on the arm of his chair, and seemed equally bemused by all the jabbering around the console. ‘Kate said the Tower was TARDIS proofed, or something. Well, Zygon Kate.’
He looked at her for a moment. Splendid girl. He’d found himself glancing inside her mind, from time to time, which was an atrocious habit, of course, and one he would have to cut out. But there was something almost familiar about her, as if they were already fellow travellers. ‘Fear makes companions of us all,’ he said, aloud, and she frowned at him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry, my dear, I don’t know why I said that. Something in your voice brought it to mind. I’m an old man, my memory is a terrible jumble.’3
‘Not as old as you’re going to get,’ she said, glancing at the other Doctors.
Or as young, he thought, then remembered she’d asked him a question. ‘In the Time War, many species became adept at proofing themselves against the intrusion of a TARDIS—it’s easier to scramble the engines than you’d think. The Zygons were particularly good at it.’
‘And the Black Archive was built inside the remains of the Zygon base!’
‘Just so. Their reasoning seems clear. They wanted to avoid the attention of the Beverley Sisters over there’—he nodded towards the other Doctors—‘who most certainly would not approve of them stockpiling alien technology.’
‘I’m not an expert,’ replied Clara, ‘but weren’t there three Beverley Sisters?’
‘I feel you are making a point, but I’m afraid it is eluding me.’
‘Then I’m not making it very well. So there’s no way we can get into the Archive?’
‘Oh, but we have to, my dear. The Zygons are in there, they must be stopped.’
‘But you just said we can’t get inside.’
‘Can’t?’ twinkled the Doctor. He held up the silver sphere he had taken from the Zygon lair. ‘No such word as can’t,’ he grinned. He got to his feet, and approached the other two, who now seemed to be tearing the console apart.
‘This wiring’s a right mess, you should sort it out,’ Bow Tie was complaining.
‘Well, apparently I’m going to.’
‘Yeah, leave everything to me.’
‘Well that is roughly what’s going to happen.’
‘Gentlemen,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘Enough of this chatter. We can’t beat the TARDIS-proofing, but there is another way.’ He tossed the silver sphere in his hand. ‘Cup-a-Soup!’ He frowned. ‘What is Cup-a-Soup?’
‘What are you on about?’ demanded Bow Tie.
‘Isn’t it time,’ said the Doctor, ‘that we our turned our enemy’s choice of weaponry against them? That is our M.O., is it not? We are the Doctor, after all.’
His ears hummed, the blood stood still in his veins, and he nearly dropped the sphere. That was it! That was what had changed! But when did he start doing that? When had he started calling himself the Doctor again?
‘You got an idea?’ Daddy’s Suit was asking.
‘Share with the class, why don’t you?’ said Bow Tie.
He could feel it inside himself. It had all come back, like it had never been away. He was ready to ride to the rescue, make some jokes, nick some stationery and trick the monsters into their own traps! He had looked the other way, and left a door open; and in that moment, look who’d snuck back in. He was the Doctor again. He should have been outraged, of course, but someone somewhere had started laughing, and to his astonishment, he realised it was him.
‘Have I missed another funny thing?’ asked Daddy’s Suit.
‘Seriously have you got a plan, Grandad?’
‘A plan? Yes, I’ve got a plan! Of course I’ve got a plan! I’ve always got a plan, I’m the Doctor. But I should warn you, boys,’ he said, and wondered if the smile on his face would ever stop growing, ‘it’s a little bit timey-wimey!’
And he started to roar with laughter again. The other two stared at him, clearly thinking he’d gone mad, but he didn’t mind a bit. Because in that wonderful moment, spinning through time and space in the TARDIS, with the Doctor and the Doctor and Clara Oswald, there was exactly one thought going round and round in my head.
Doctor once more!