LADY SCINTILLA, GREATEST of the Visionaries, stepped from the cabinet where she had been imprisoned for countless thousands of years.
She was quite unlike the illustration in Our Planet Story, reflected Romana, not at all that haughty flame-haired woman in red robes. The real Lady Scintilla was short, even dumpy, and she wore a simple orange tunic with the number of her cell stencilled on the sleeve. Her eyes stared forward unseeing, her consciousness blurred from the cryogenic process. But there was one thing those illustrators of Gallifreyan nursery books had got absolutely right. Scintilla’s slender fingers ended in six-inch razor-sharp nails painted blood red.
From the other cabinets staggered the tyrant brothers Subjatric and Rundgar, similarly attired in orange prisoners’ suits. They were tall, with the high domed foreheads, long, sallow faces and beaked noses so typical of the older Prydonian families. But there was, even in their current mindless state as they recovered from cryogenic immurement, a savageness and cruelty in those features, the innate primitivism that had caused them to usurp the powers of the then-President and wage terrible war on their own people.
Romana called across to Skagra, who stood almost mesmerised before the reviving criminals. ‘They’ll be fully awake soon, Skagra. I wouldn’t give much for our chances when they come to.’
‘Thank you for the reminder,’ Skagra said neatly. ‘The time has come. The beginning of the Universal Mind.’ He sounded as if he could scarcely believe it himself.
With a swift, cutting gesture he summoned the sphere into his gloved hand. Then he walked slowly and reverently towards another of the black slab-like cabinets.
He reached out with his free hand and gently touched its ebonite surface. ‘In here. The man I have sought for so many long, long years. The man whose power I will use to reshape the entire universe!’
His fingers moved to the cabinet’s small input panel.
Romana felt black despair. In this, the darkest moment of her life, she permitted herself a supremely illogical and unscientific whim. Surrounded by nightmares of her childhood, as alone as she had ever been, she closed her eyes and wished.
She wished the Doctor was here.
Skagra’s gloved index finger tapped at the control panel, beginning to key in the release code.
‘Let Salyavin be released,’ he whispered.
‘Er, sorry to intrude again, Skagra,’ said a voice suddenly, the voice of the man Romana had wished for. ‘But I really wouldn’t do that, if I were you.’
Skagra’s head whipped round. The Kraag Commander’s head whipped round. Romana, a smile illuminating her face, turned her head slowly and opened her eyes.
In the doorway stood the Doctor, K-9 at his feet, and – incredibly, impossibly – the absolutely, definitely dead Professor Chronotis at his side. Romana hadn’t even dared wish for that! But how wonderful it was to see the nice old man again.
‘Doc-tor,’ gurgled Skagra, more than just a hint of a mad gleam in his eyes, the tic over his right temple kicking dangerously.
‘Well if it’s not him, it’s someone very handsome wearing his scarf,’ said the Doctor, striding into the chamber. He patted Romana gently on the back. ‘Hello, Romana, not dead I see. Good, good.’ He blinked at the three prisoners, who were milling about like zombies by their cabinets. ‘Quite a party you’ve got going here, Skagra. Don’t think much of this lot, they look half-cut already, and it’s always best to try for a good mix of evil and not evil on the guest list, I find.’ He nodded to the Kraag Commander. ‘You need to have a word with your bouncer. So, is nobody going to offer me a crisp?’
Chronotis shot forward, passing the apparently casual Doctor with surprising agility. ‘Skagra, stop! You must not release Salyavin!’
Skagra signalled to the Kraag Commander. It stomped angrily towards the intruders, glowing claw outstretched. Chronotis was forced to retreat by the intense heat, staggering back into the Doctor’s arms.
‘You’re too late!’ cried Skagra. He pressed the final key in the sequence and stood back, eyes glittering. ‘Salyavin is released!’ he cried.
The inner mechanism of the cabinet clunked.
Cryogenic gas swirled from within.
The heavy door creaked slowly open.
Romana looked instinctively for the Doctor’s reaction. To her amazement, he wore an expression that seemed knowing and slightly amused.
The door swung fully open.
There was nobody inside.
Skagra stared into the cabinet. He seemed to see something through the dissipating vapour. Then he let out a guttural, animal cry and collapsed to his knees, the sphere falling from his grasp and hovering distantly as if confused.
‘Careful what you wish for, Skagra,’ said the Doctor, almost pityingly.
‘Salyavin…’ whispered Skagra in a small, broken voice. ‘Where is Salyavin?’
The Doctor ushered Romana, K-9 and the Professor gently forward. The Kraag Commander, seemingly baffled by this turn of events, simply let them pass.
Romana looked beyond Skagra and into the empty cabinet. Where the Great Mind Outlaw should have been was nothing but a sheet of paper, fastened to the back wall with a drawing pin. Romana gasped at the message it bore:
It was the ancient V of Rassilon, the greatest and rudest insult of the Dark Times. The script beneath read in Old High Gallifreyan:
HA HA HA, ———1 YOU! LOVE SALYAVIN X
‘No, this cannot be,’ whimpered Skagra. ‘My life’s work… the Universal Mind…’
The Doctor gently lifted Skagra to his feet. ‘The dream is over, Skagra,’ he said almost sadly. ‘The Great Salyavin fooled all of us. He escaped from Shada centuries ago.’
Skagra almost fell into the Doctor’s arms. Tears began to cascade from his eyes.
‘Help me,’ he wailed. ‘Please – help me, Doctor…’
‘Don’t you worry,’ said the Doctor, looking around at Romana, Professor Chronotis and K-9. ‘There’s nothing for any of us to worry about now.’
Skagra’s anguished sobs grew louder.
The Doctor patted him on the back. ‘There there, it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Between you and me, Skagra, using that one little sphere to dominate the minds of everyone in the universe would have taken an incredibly long time, probably more time than the old thing’s got left to it anyway. I don’t honestly think you’d thought that bit through properly.’
Chronotis had shuffled past the Kraag, and was looking into the empty cabinet. He tugged at the Doctor’s sleeve. ‘Then it really is all over, Doctor?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes, Professor Chronotis.’ He smiled warmly down at the little old man. ‘We’ll clean up a bit, find poor old Skagra here the help he so desperately needs, get these charming people –’ he indicated the Ancient Outlaws – ‘back to sleep, and then I see no reason why Shada shouldn’t stay a secret, as Salyavin intended. Then we all go home for tea and crackers.’
‘As Salyavin intended?’ queried Romana.
‘He was the Great Mind Outlaw, remember,’ said the Doctor. ‘And what a great escape he made. What better than to vamoose and then use your mind powers to make your jailers forget there was ever a jail in the first place?’
Chris Parsons hurried through the deep, dark red hallways of Shada. At last he would prove himself, at last he was going to be useful, and at last he’d show the universe in general – and Clare in particular – that he was no slouch. There were no flies on Chris Parsons! Whatever that meant.
He heard raised voices ahead and ran faster towards them.
‘But Doctor,’ he heard Romana saying, ‘where is Salyavin? Someone with his power loose in the universe, it’s a terrifying thought.’
Chris rounded a corner and burst through an open doorway into a scene of utter confusion. There were three zombies in orange tunics milling about. There was a Kraag which somehow looked as if it was questioning its purpose in life. And there was Romana, standing with K-9 and the Professor, all three looking over at the Doctor, who for some incredible reason had Skagra cradled in his arms like a frightened toddler. Above their heads, the sphere was drifting disconsolately around.
‘Don’t you worry about Salyavin, Romana,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘probably long dead by now.’
Chris ran towards the Doctor, waving his arms as if in warning. All eyes turned to him. ‘Salyavin,’ he cried, almost out of breath.
The Doctor, face suddenly grave, put up a warning hand. ‘Bristol, no!’ he bellowed.
At exactly the same time Chris jabbed his finger manically at Professor Chronotis and shouted, ‘It’s him! The Professor! He’s not the Professor! He’s Salyavin!’
There was a shocked silence.
Then Skagra slowly raised his head from the Doctor’s shoulder. His eyes, now glittering not with tears, but with renewed purpose and devilish intent, fixed on Professor Chronotis.
‘Oh,
said the Doctor.
1 Though remarkably flexible in its usage, this word is unfortunately untranslatable from Old High Gallifreyan into Earth English. Very roughly speaking it conveys disdain, contempt and extreme annoyance, all wrapped up in a generally obscene etymological parcel that is far ruder than any reader of this book can possibly imagine. For this reason it has also been deleted from the Matrix.