6

‘I love a good chase,’ Cotterill said. ‘All the best stories end with a good chase.’ He looked around as the forest faded, becoming a mountaintop. ‘You certainly have read a lot of books.’

‘Yes I have,’ said the Doctor, raising his head. ‘I have read a lot of books. Travelling as much as I do, spending all that time alone, not really sleeping … Well, you tend to read, don’t you? I’ve got nine hundred years’ worth of books in my head, Cotterill, and you’re getting all of them. All at once.’

Their surroundings started shifting faster – open water, countryside, a sterile lobby, alien world, alien building, missile silo – like a flipbook being flicked through.

‘Stop,’ said Cotterill, his eyes widening.

‘Don’t think so,’ said the Doctor. ‘See, now you’re in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘And I’m not letting you out.’

The world around them was a blur. Cotterill staggered, his face pale.

‘Stop him!’ he shouted. ‘Kill him!’

Martha ran to the Doctor’s side as the Un-Men closed in. ‘Doctor! Could really do with a weapon!’

Their flickering surroundings slowed suddenly, and Martha found a thick branch by her foot. She snatched it up and the world got back to blurring.

‘A branch,’ she said. ‘That’s it?’

‘Best I could do,’ the Doctor muttered. His face was tight with concentration and his eyes were closed.

Martha swung at the nearest Un-Man, whacking it across the head. It took a single step back. She didn’t know how – or even if – it registered pain, but it was a biped, so most of what she knew about human anatomy could be applied – she hoped.

She swung again, low this time, the branch crunching into the side of its knee. It dropped and she spun round, the branch cracking into the elbow of another Un-Man who was reaching for the Doctor. She charged into it, bounced off, but managed to send it back a few steps.

‘Come on!’ she roared as the other Un-Men circled her. ‘I’ll have the lot of you!’

They didn’t appear to be the slightest bit intimidated by her challenge, and pressed forward.

‘No,’ Cotterill gasped, looking behind him. Martha glanced over. The ever-changing landscape was making her feel sick and dizzy, but in the distance there was a pocket of nothingness, and it was growing bigger.

One of the Un-Men grabbed Martha and she whirled, swinging the branch – but right before it made contact the branch vanished from her hands.

‘Sorry,’ the Doctor muttered.

The Un-Man’s fingers closed round Martha’s throat, began to squeeze, and then suddenly the Un-Man wasn’t there any more either. Martha turned, gasping, and watched the remaining Un-Men vanish.

The pocket of nothing was getting closer. It joined up with another. Martha saw more nothingness on the outskirts, beyond the trees and buildings and walls and rocks that flickered by.

‘Stop!’ Cotterill roared. ‘Please! This is my home!’

The landscape lost its features. It was now something small and curved, like they were standing on a planet only as wide as a football pitch, surrounded on all sides by the ever-encroaching emptiness. And Cotterill himself was changing, shrinking, losing his physical form, becoming a twisting thing of shadows and light.

The Doctor got to his feet, slowly. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘I think someone owes someone else an apology.’

‘I am sorry,’ said the being that was once Cotterill. Its voice echoed in Martha’s ears. ‘Please let me leave your mind. It hurts.’

‘I know it does,’ the Doctor said. The screwdriver was in his hand again, scanning. He looked at the results, and grunted. ‘Who are you?’

‘My people do not have names,’ it said. ‘I am of the Ch’otterai. The legends of my people told us we were once gods; told us we could reshape reality with our minds. But the Ch’otterai have never had particularly vibrant imaginations, so if we had ever had that potential we had long since squandered it on petty acts of showmanship.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘My ship malfunctioned, exploded, destroyed my physical body and cast my consciousness adrift.’

Martha narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re a ghost?’

‘In a way,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘So what happened? A few centuries pass, you get bored, someone has the misfortune to get too close … and you latch on?’

‘I thought they could take me home,’ the Ch’otterai said. ‘All I needed was enough strength to take physical form … but I couldn’t leave this point in space. I was stuck here, in this point where I died. So I gave them their stories and fed on the power that resulted, and then I drew another ship here, and another … and I created a planet. I reshaped reality. I became a god.’

‘A big god in a small pond,’ said the Doctor, ‘using other people’s imaginations because your own is too stunted. And what happened to these ships you drew in, eh? What happened to these people?’

The Ch’otterai hesitated. ‘I gave them their stories.’

‘And then what happened to them?’

‘They left.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘They left. I promise you, I let them go. I am a benevolent god.’

‘You’re quick to anger, is what you are. Quick to shout, “Off with their heads!”’

‘No, I –’

‘What did you do with their bodies? And the ships? Did you push them into a big lake of nothingness, let that swallow them up?’

The swirling form of the Ch’otterai slowed for a moment. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know what it has been like for me. They were going to leave, Doctor. Their stories turned stale and they grew bored. I needed them and they were going to abandon me, they were going to warn others to stay away. I … I couldn’t let that happen.’

‘So you killed them.’

‘I gave them a choice. Every single one of them, I gave them a choice. Stay and I will provide, or try to leave and I will destroy.’

‘They all tried to leave,’ Martha said softly.

The Ch’otterai’s voice turned hard, and its swirling intensified with anger. ‘They lied. They promised to stay and then tried to get to their ships. They sought to steal my energy from me. They deserved destruction.’

The swirling became so violent Martha took a step back – and then, as if it had realised it had gone too far, the swirling slowed, and the Ch’otterai’s voice became softer.

‘But, Doctor … you’re different. If we take our time, you could make me strong enough to build a galaxy, and from there, a universe. You could rule that universe, the both of you, as king and queen.’

‘With you as our god,’ the Doctor murmured.

‘Yes,’ the Ch’otterai responded.

‘No,’ said the Doctor. He put his hand out, found Martha’s, and they both started walking backwards. They were now on a surface no bigger than a swimming pool.

The Ch’otterai’s form was twisting so fast it was blurring. ‘Stop!’ it shrieked. ‘Take one more step and I’ll flood you with the void. You won’t even get to your ship!’

Martha and the Doctor froze.

‘You’ll be sacrificing the last of your power,’ the Doctor said.

‘I’ll do it! I’ll kill you before I let you leave! I’ll start again! I’ll find someone new!’

Martha glanced behind her. The TARDIS was three strides away. Too far.

‘We’re not going to stay,’ the Doctor said. ‘We can’t.’

The Ch’otterai’s voice took on an edge. ‘Then find a way to take me with you. Or better yet, find a way to transport me to this Land of Fiction. One of my Un-Men heard you talking about it. Take me there, Doctor, and I will let you both live.’

‘The Land of Fiction isn’t even in this reality.’

‘You’re an intelligent being,’ said the Ch’otterai. The swirling was calmer now that it was growing in confidence. ‘I’m sure you can find a way. Put your mind to it or perish.’

Martha let go of the Doctor and got ready to leap towards the TARDIS. The Doctor slipped his hands into his pockets.

‘There might be something I can do,’ he said. ‘I have an emergency unit onboard. I won’t bore you with the details, but it could allow us to slip sideways through dimensions. Technically, you wouldn’t even leave this space you’re haunting. It’s quite dangerous, however. There’s no guarantee Martha and I could ever return once we’ve delivered you. I don’t think it’s a good –’

‘Do it or die, Doctor,’ said the Ch’otterai. ‘It is that simple.’

The Doctor took a moment, and Martha saw his jaw tightening. ‘Very well,’ he said. He walked to the TARDIS and pushed open the door. The Ch’otterai swirled inside before the Doctor could change his mind …

And then the Doctor slammed the door.

Martha stared at him. ‘What are you doing? You’re locking it in the TARDIS? What if it takes off?’

The Doctor leaned one shoulder against the door and folded his arms. ‘The Ch’otterai is a being of pure psychic energy. True, it has the potential to be infinitely powerful, but right now it can barely keep itself together.’

For once, the Doctor’s calm demeanour failed to soothe Martha’s worry. ‘So explain to me how locking it in the TARDIS is a good idea.’

‘The TARDIS isn’t a machine, Martha. Well, it is, but it’s also so much more. You saw how I overloaded the Ch’otterai with the books I’ve read? My imagination reduced it from a ghost with a planet to a ghost with a garden plot. Now, just think what the TARDIS will do to it.’

Martha frowned. ‘The TARDIS has an imagination?’

The Doctor laughed. ‘From a certain point of view, the TARDIS is imagination.’

He slipped his key into the lock, turned it and motioned to the open door.

Martha walked through. The console room was quiet. There was no sign of the Ch’otterai. The Doctor walked past her, strode to the console, flicked a few switches and glanced at a few readouts.

‘Where is it?’ Martha asked.

‘Gone,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or mostly gone, anyway. From what I can tell, it’s been reduced to a single thought, and probably not a nice one at that.’

Martha looked around. ‘So where is it?’

The Doctor waved a hand in the air. ‘Here. There. I don’t know.’

‘But when we leave, we won’t take it with us, will we?’

‘What’s the matter, Miss Jones? You don’t like the idea of a haunted TARDIS?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the Doctor said, pulling levers. ‘We’ll fly off to distant lands, but what remains of the Ch’otterai will stay here. Probably.’

She didn’t like that ‘probably’, but she didn’t say anything as the TARDIS started to wheeze and whoosh. She walked up to a monitor, saw the nothingness outside fold in on itself and blink out of existence. For a moment there was nothing but empty space and stars, and then the screen went blank.