ALL HAD DEPARTED from that meeting of the School of Night but for Doctor Dee and the newest member, one who always wore black. He offered Dee a gift: a black, circular looking glass fashioned from obsidian stone.
‘A specularibus lapidibus,’ explained the dark-robed candidate.
‘Yes,’ Dee agreed. ‘A scrying-glass, and a good one at that. Where didst thou find it?’
‘Aztec loot, plundered from a Spanish conquistador. It is said that sublime visions can be conjured by it.’
Dee took the object and stared into it, mesmerised by its smooth black surface. He had always been tempted by the dark arts. He saw his ghostly reflection in the polished volcanic stone.
‘One might then see through a glass darkly…’ he muttered.
‘And I have something else that will help in the scrying,’ added the other man.
He produced a lacquered wooden box and slid open its lid. Something twitched within and emitted a fetid odour. Dee peered at a creature inside: a fat, purpled slug that squirmed and shimmered.
‘An incubus?’ Dee gasped.
‘Yes,’ the man took it out and held it towards Dee’s face.
The head of the incubus began to pulsate. Transfixed, Dee felt his revulsion change to a more terrifying emotion: desire. All at once horror became seduction and, as the aura of the creature invaded his senses, Dee began to salivate. With a quiver it leapt onto his face. He felt it on his beard, against his mouth, wet upon his lips. His neck arched back in a spasm of exquisite terror as it slithered inside of him.
Moving quickly, it lodged itself deep within his guts. The incubus took possession of him. Blood, bile, phlegm, Dee felt it in all his humours, but it made its dwelling place that most vulnerable part: his very soul of yearning. And it took his conscious mind for a moment too, wiping the memory of its visitation from Dee’s recollection.
‘Something else for the scrying?’ Dee asked, looking into the now apparently empty box.
‘Here,’ the man pulled out a slip of parchment scored with grotesque characters. ‘Use this incantation. Call upon the Hieroglyphic Monad.’
Three nights later Dee and his fearful pupil Thomas set the obsidian scrying glass on an alchemists’ ‘table of practice’ amid the vast library of his house in Mortlake. They bowed before this altar of blasphemy draped with a tapestry of cabalistic symbols. The young assistant trembled as his mentor began to mutter a dreadful incantation.
‘Sir,’ the pupil whispered in protest. ‘Is this not the dark art of witchcraft?’
The magus in his black clerical robes and skullcap turned to admonish his acolyte.
‘Look upon the black stone,’ he commanded. ‘The scrying glass will manifest sublime visions. Then we may witness the divine and speak with angels.’
‘But what if in our attempt to conjure angels we summon demons?’
The older man shuddered a moment. A flickering, fugitive memory of his own demonic infestation. It had come to vivid life by night in grotesque and lustful phantasms, then had left him oblivious by morning. All that lingered was a hunger for dark knowledge and that dreadful brooding of morose delectation. He felt enslaved by own curiosity.
‘Hush!’ Dee implored, more to himself than to his assistant. He raised his hands in supplication and began chanting once more. The obsidian mirror began to glow and the outline of a curious symbol formed on its polished surface. ‘See!’ he called out. ‘The Hieroglyphic Monad! The great talisman that can draw down heavenly forces.’
There came a great rush of wind within the library and a ghostly throbbing light that threw wild shadows against the cluttered bookshelves. As the bearded sage stood to greet this apparition, his pupil crouched in terror, his hands clasped in prayer.
‘May the saints preserve us,’ he begged.
Lightheaded with astonishment, Dee slowly approached the strange blue box that had miraculously appeared within the confines of the great library. ‘See what I have conjured!’ he declared, breathlessly. ‘It appears to be some sort of sarcophagus. Egyptian, perhaps.’
As he tentatively reached out to touch its panelled sides, a door sprang open and a man in brightly coloured garb stepped out.
‘What are you doing in there?’ Dee demanded. ‘Who are you?’
‘Well, I could ask you the same question.’
‘I’m the Doctor.’
‘What?’ spluttered the Doctor indignantly. ‘That’s my line. I’m the Doctor!’
‘Well, you look like a fool in that jester’s motley,’ Dee retorted, indicating the garish frock coat and yellow britches.
‘How dare you, sir! What gives you the right to insult me?’
‘I’m the Doctor.’
‘You keep saying that! Doctor who?’
‘Doctor Dee.’
‘Doctor Dee?’ the Doctor pondered. ‘I’ve heard of you.’
‘Of course you have. Doctor of divinity and of mathematics. Alchemist, astrologist, navigator, I am, sir, Her Majesty’s most noble intelligencer. And the greatest mind of our time.’
‘Only of your time? Well, I can do better than that,’ the Doctor boasted.
But Dee ignored him. ‘Now my magical prowess is proven,’ he continued, touching the side of the blue box once more, ‘in conjuring this vessel.’
‘This is my vessel! So hands off.’
‘But do you deny that I summoned this craft?’
‘No! I mean, yes, I mean…’ The Doctor was momentarily baffled. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.
Dee turned to his table of practice. Thomas rose timidly up from behind it.
‘First let me introduce my pupil. Thomas Digges, an able mathematician and astronomer in his own right.’
‘Honoured to make your acquaintance, sir,’ said Thomas with a deferential nod.
‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ the Doctor answered tersely. Then he clicked his fingers, as if remembering something. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve got an assistant too. Peri!’
A young woman in denim shorts and a silver zip-up jacket emerged from the TARDIS.
‘What’s up?’ she hailed them, then turned to the Doctor. ‘Where are we?’
‘Elizabethan England. Not sure if that’s quite the look for this period.’
‘Hey, if you would have let me know where we were going…’
‘Never mind that now. This is Doctor Dee and Thomas Digges. I present my companion, Perpugilliam Brown.’
‘You can call me Peri.’
‘An angel!’ Thomas declared as he rushed forward to kneel before Peri. ‘We have truly conjured an angel. May I?’
Thomas took her hand and kissed it.
‘Hey, cut that out, er…’
‘Digges. Thomas Digges. Your humble servant.’
‘Yeah, right. Look, get up will you?’
‘I am at your command,’ Thomas stood.
‘Listen, Tommy, I’m no angel.’
‘But surely you are from some strange land.’
‘Well, I’m an American.’
‘A wondrous creature of the New World!’
‘I guess.’
The Doctor turned to Dee. ‘So, how did you manage to make contact with our TARDIS?’ he demanded.
‘TARDIS?’
‘Yes, this vessel of ours.’
‘Let me show you.’
Dee led the Doctor and Peri over to his table of practice. He pointed to the symbol that still burned against the black surface of the scrying glass.
‘Hermetic wisdom instructs us to gain astral influence through the correct use of talismans,’ he went on.
‘Yes,’ the Doctor nodded. ‘A symbolic device that activated a distress signal in the control system of the TARDIS. Let me have a look at it.’
Peering into the obsidian stone, the Doctor could make out that the sign on it was an entwined composite of arcane glyphs representing the stars, the planets, the elements.
‘Fascinating,’ he remarked.
‘It’s happened before,’ Peri shrugged. ‘When we first met, the TARDIS was diverted by that weird symbol from my stepfather’s archaeological survey. Right?’
‘Another life. So many lives.’ The Doctor absently traced the outline of the figure with his fingers.
‘Yeah, well, you were kind of different then,’ said Peri.
‘My fifth incarnation. Never liked that one much. So tediously sure of myself. Now this,’ he pointed at the emblem. ‘This looks like the Hieroglyphic Monad.’
‘You know it?’ Dee started, surprised by the Doctor’s knowledge and at the quiver of something in his guts.
‘What’s the Hieroglyphic Monad?’ Peri asked.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘I suppose it was a Renaissance attempt at the Grand Unified Theory.’
‘Yes,’ said Dee with a growing feeling of visceral excitement. ‘This symbol encodes a vision of unity in the cosmos. I wrote a treatise on it seven years ago. Unfortunately my commentary is incomplete. I’m yet to decipher it completely.’
‘Well, it’s best left alone,’ said the Doctor. ‘Trust me.’
Dee’s disappointment was physical, a palpable sinking in his stomach. ‘But you have some knowledge of it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you are of the School of Night.’
‘Perhaps.’ The Doctor shrugged again.
‘What’s the School of Night?’ asked Peri.
‘A secret society,’ Thomas explained. ‘A place where freethinking scholars might talk of subjects condemned as heresy. Alchemy, astrology, heliocentricism.’
‘Heliocentricism? Like, the Earth going round the Sun?’ she asked.
‘It is a dangerous belief, my lady,’ Thomas assured her. ‘Men have been burnt at the stake for it.’
‘And the School of Night is where I acquired this talismanic scrying glass. From a new member,’ said Dee, turning to the Doctor. ‘One much like yourself, sir.’
‘Not another doctor, I hope.’
Dee laughed. ‘No. The two of us are more than enough, sir. This one has not reached our exalted status. In the secret academy he is between bachelor and doctor.’
Peri frowned. ‘This distress signal is kind of strange,’ she said. ‘Last time that happened it was a trap.’
‘Do you know what might have alerted us?’ the Doctor asked Dee.
‘We have observed a great disturbance in the heavens,’ he replied.
‘In the constellation of Cassiopeia,’ Thomas added.
‘Wait a minute,’ the Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘What time is it?’
‘The chimes struck midnight more than an hour ago,’ said Thomas.
‘The date, man, the date!’
‘It’s the morning of the third of November.’
‘Yes, yes, go on.’
‘The year of our Lord fifteen-hundred and seventy-two.’
‘Of course! The supernova in Cassiopeia, Earth time 1572.’ The Doctor took out the fob watch from his waistcoat and studied it. ‘But that doesn’t happen until tomorrow.’
‘We have seen a strange light distortion in the constellation. Come,’ beckoned Dee. ‘Upstairs to our observatory.’
They climbed a spiral staircase up into a windowed belvedere on top of the library. By an open casement a brass tripod held a hexagonal wooden column that pointed out into the night sky.
‘Behold, our perspective glass,’ said Dee. ‘A marvellous artifice constructed by Thomas here.’
‘It was my late father’s invention,’ the young man explained. ‘He proposed that by fixing lenses both concave and convex within a frame at the correct angles one might view distant objects with greater clarity and increased magnitude.’
‘Am I getting my centuries mixed up or wasn’t it the seventeenth century that the telescope was invented?’ Peri whispered to the Doctor.
‘There were many prototypes,’ he explained, noting that the instrument was aimed at the great ‘W’ of Cassiopeia. ‘Might I have a look?’
‘Pray, be our guest,’ said Dee.
The Doctor put his eye to it and hummed to himself for a minute. He stood back.
‘There’s certainly a distortion somewhere in that constellation. We’re looking at the past, of course, but I can’t explain it. Unless…’ He stroked his chin. ‘Unless someone was powering up a massive interstellar transportation portal.’
‘What?’ demanded Dee. ‘A door in the heavens?’
‘Something like that. I need to check the instruments in the TARDIS.’
‘I would like to see the inside of this TARDIS,’ Dee ventured.
‘Very well,’ the Doctor gestured at the stairs. ‘Lead on, Doctor.’
‘Please, after you,’ Dee rejoined. ‘Doctor.’
And with that they both went back down to the library.
Peri had wandered over to one of the windows of the belvedere. It was a cold, clear night. She gazed up at a vaulted cosmos ripe with starlight. Below she could make out the silvered curve of the river Thames and the faint glow of the city beyond. Then she was aware that Thomas was looking at her. She turned to hold his stare.
‘Well, what do you know,’ she said. ‘Your Doctor is as crazy as mine.’
Thomas shrugged nervously.
‘I am honoured to have him as my guardian and tutor. But yes,’ he agreed, ‘a prodigious mind rarely has an even temperament.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘I was 13 when my father died. I promised that I would continue his work. Doctor Dee has been my second father. My mathematical father, I call him.’
‘Your dad died when you were 13? That’s weird, so did mine.’
‘That is indeed strange. And this Doctor of yours, he is your guardian?’
‘Not exactly. We’re companions, you could say.’
‘Oh.’ Thomas looked embarrassed.
‘Hey, it’s nothing like that.’
‘I did not presume, my lady,’ he flustered.
‘Look, relax, will you?’ She gestured at the perspective glass. ‘Can I take a look?’
‘Please.’
‘That’s Cassiopeia, huh?’
‘Yes. Named for a vain queen who boasted of her unrivalled beauty.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. Thou need’st not boast of thine.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘No, no, I mean,’ he stammered. ‘I mean, thou dost not boast, yet thou art beautiful.’
Peri lifted her head from the perspective glass. ‘Listen Tommy, take it easy, OK?’
‘Perpugilliam…’ He enunciated the word with delight. ‘An enchanting name. It is Latin for “by a handful”, is it not?’
‘By a fistful if you’re not careful.’
Thomas gave a nervous laugh. ‘I have heard it said that the natives of America are quite savage.’
‘They weren’t kidding.’
‘Ah! The proud beauty of such wild nobility.’
‘Hey, enough!’
Thomas jumped back a little at the force of Peri’s voice.
‘Forgive me, lady.’ He lowered his head. ‘I meant no offence.’
‘Yeah, I know, I know. But listen, you don’t even know who I am. I’m not an angel or some exotic savage. You might like to know that I’m something of a scholar myself.’
‘A scholar?’
‘Don’t look so surprised. I’m a pretty good one. I’ve been studying at Caltech.’
‘Caltech?’
‘The California Institute of Technology. It’s a pretty good school. It’s in America.’
‘Another wonder of the New World.’
‘Yeah. The America four hundred years in the future.’
‘You are a woman of the future?’
‘You better believe it, Tommy. And I like to think I’m pretty intelligent. So am I the only one who thinks that something very fishy is going on here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The TARDIS gets diverted here by some symbolic device that generates a distress signal. The last time that happened was big trouble. And your Doctor Dee and his strange School of Night, that new member he mentioned: “between bachelor and doctor”. What does that mean?’
‘Well, in the ranks of academia, between bachelor and doctor…’
‘Oh no!’
‘… is a master.’
‘Quick!’ Peri ordered. ‘Back downstairs!’
‘If I’m right,’ the Doctor said to Dee as they passed through the library. ‘My instruments should be able to detect the size and location of this interstellar portal.’
‘Wait,’ implored Dee. ‘I feel sure that this has been foretold in scripture. Let me see…’
The Doctor sighed heavily as Dee found his Bible and began to quickly leaf through its pages.
‘Yes!’ Dee pointed at the page he had found. ‘Revelation, Chapter Four, Verse One: After this I looked, and behold a door was opened in Heaven; and the first voice I heard was as if it were a trumpet talking with me; which said come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter.’
‘Maybe that’s it,’ the Doctor nodded, inspired by the strange words. ‘Perhaps someone on Earth has been communicating with Cassiopeia.’
A servant entered just as Dee was about to reply.
‘A guest to see you, sir.’
‘At this hour?’
‘He is of the School, sir.’
‘Then show him in,’ Dee ordered and then turned to the Doctor. ‘Just as our name implies, we rarely meet in the presence of the Sun. Perhaps it is the one I mentioned.’
‘The one you said that was much like me,’ said the Doctor as a dark figure appeared at the doorway. ‘Wait a minute…’
A man entered, wearing a black coat with a high collar. The sneer framed by his goatee beard was unmistakable, as was the tissue compression eliminator that he held in his hand.
‘The Master!’ hissed the Doctor.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You are right, Doctor Dee. We are two of a kind. But this one has shown no mercy to his own. I barely escaped the last predicament you set for me and I swore then to return to this, your favourite planet. I scarcely made it. My TARDIS damaged, with all its fluid links depleted, crash-landed by some ancient homing beacon, an old obelisk within the City of London. Now, the key to your TARDIS, if you please.’
As he pulled out the key and slowly handed it to the Master, the Doctor noticed Peri and Thomas coming down the staircase behind him.
‘So it’s you that has made contact with Cassiopeia?’ he asked.
‘Yes. My communication systems are still operational.’ The Master laughed and turned to Dee. ‘I have spoken with a higher intelligence.’
‘You mean in angelic conversation?’ demanded Dee, feeling that curious throb once again in his guts.
‘Something like that,’ the Master smiled as he noted the look of longing in Dee’s face. ‘Aren’t these Renaissance terms charming, Doctor? I feel quite at home amid these alchemists and sorcerers.’
‘Hey!’ Peri shouted and the Master spun round. The Doctor lunged forward, making a grab for the tissue compression eliminator but it fumbled from his hands and onto the floor. The Master struck the Doctor with a glancing blow to the head that felled him, then turned to the magus.
‘Give that back to me now, there’s a good fellow,’ the Master implored softly.
Dee, who had picked up the device and was examining it, stared at the object in his hand. ‘What is this curious wand?’ he asked.
‘It has the power to shrink a man to a homunculus. Give it to me and I’ll show you many other powers.’
‘But the Doctor,’ Dee protested.
‘You saw how he attacked me. You were right, we are both alike. But I will tell you secrets that he would never reveal to you.’
‘Don’t listen to him!’ Peri called out.
‘Think of what I could teach you. The transmutation of elements, the capacity to converse with angelic forces. I could even show you how to unlock the code of the Hieroglyphic Monad.’
‘The Monad!’ gasped Dee, feeling the worm of temptation come alive and his own will drawn by it. The incubus inside fed off his hunger for learning and heightened his craving for dark intelligence.
‘Yes.’ The Master pointed down at his adversary. ‘This one wouldn’t tell you that, would he? Do you know why?’
‘Because it is forbidden knowledge?’ Dee asked, now possessed by a fervent lust for transgressive wisdom.
‘Perhaps. But also,’ the Master grinned, ‘he doesn’t know. I have seen it all. As a child, I gazed through the Untempered Schism, into the very Vortex of Time.’
‘And it sent you mad!’ taunted the Doctor, as he struggled up on his knees.
‘He is a lesser mind.’ The Master stared into Dee’s eyes as he spoke. ‘Give me that wand and I will give you what you want. I can make you a true magician.’
Dee’s body convulsed as the incubus moved inside him, directing his intent, steering his actions, all the time glutting itself on his desperate curiosity. He slowly passed the tissue compression eliminator into the hand of its owner. The Master smiled and aimed it at the Doctor. Peri and Thomas moved forward.
Stay back!’ the Master warned them. He kept the weapon aimed at the Doctor as he backed his way to the TARDIS.
‘Now Doctor,’ he said as he unlocked the door of the time machine. ‘I will shrink you to the size of your meagre ambition.’
‘No!’ screamed Peri and rushed him. In the ensuing struggle she was pulled into the TARDIS with him.
‘Wait! Unhand her!’ called Thomas, and he followed her through the entrance.
The TARDIS doors slammed behind all three of them, and all at once it began to dematerialise.
Dee helped the Doctor to his feet and the two men looked warily at each other.
‘Why on Earth did you let the Master get away like that?’ the Doctor shouted.
‘Well, I…’ Dee shrugged, unable to explain how physically enthralled he felt by the Master’s promises.
‘He’s an extremely dangerous fellow!’
‘But he said that he could decipher the Monad whereas you could not,’ Dee reasoned. ‘He knows more than you, doesn’t he?’
‘Well…’ The Doctor blew through his lips. ‘Technically speaking, perhaps.’
‘Technically?’
‘Yes. He lacks my creative imagination, my flair. Being a genius is not just about knowledge, you know.’
‘But he has more knowledge. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor conceded tetchily. ‘Now we really must get after him.’
Dee nodded, smarting at a cramp in his innards, an awful yawning emptiness.
‘Where have they gone?’ Dee asked.
‘I suspect the Master has stolen my TARDIS to make his way to Cassiopeia for some reason. But he let slip that he has left his own damaged TARDIS somewhere in London. If we can find it I might be able to repair it. Though I’ll need to find mercury to fix the depleted fluid links.’
‘Mercury? Why, I have a plentiful supply here.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. No alchemist worth his salt is ever without mercury. Now we need to find where he has hidden this vessel of his.’
‘An old obelisk within the City of London, he said.’
Dee thought for a moment. ‘Of course!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘It must be the London Stone!’
‘What did you mean by barging into the TARDIS like that?’ asked Peri.
‘I wished to save you from that diabolical fellow, my lady,’ Thomas replied.
‘Well, that’s very gallant and all. Now he’s got us both.’
They sat on the floor of the control room with their hands tied. The Master had subdued them with the threat of his tissue compression eliminator and he now adjusted the coordinates at the Doctor’s console.
‘For once, I entirely approve of your wretched interference, Peri,’ he told her. ‘A couple of healthy specimens from the Cassiopeian’s brave new world are just what we need.’
‘What does he mean?’ Thomas asked Peri.
‘Who knows?’ she said, recognising the distinctive sound and feel of a TARDIS coming in to land. ‘But I’m thinking we’re about to find out.’
The Master bade them stand and walk before him as the doors of the TARDIS opened. They had materialised inside the outer rim of a vast spherical vessel several miles in diameter that turned slowly around a central hub. Above them stretched a bewildering labyrinth of walkways and transit tubes that connected great halls and tiered galleries. A group of blue-skinned humanoids greeted them. Their leader stepped forward.
‘Hail to the Master!’ he declared and the other Cassiopieans echoed his tribute.
Guardian Lex was with the reception committee on board the Mothership when the Master arrived. It was deemed a great honour to be in the presence of the ‘Saviour of the Cassiopieans’. Quite a cult had grown up around this miraculous stranger who promised to save them from an impending apocalypse. So many new and strange beliefs had come with the instigation of the Great Selection. But her biologist’s curiosity was equally drawn to the creatures that he had brought with him. Pinkish-hued, like himself, these were the humans that he had spoken of.
She watched them stepping out of the blue vehicle, stumbling slightly as they adjusted to the artificial gravity generated by rotation of the massive craft. They looked up at the vast viewing panels around and wondered at the cosmos beyond.
Supreme Commander Grell of the Cassiopeian Fleet showed the Master to the control station of the interstellar portal. At a distance, a circle of lights could be seen that marked out an area of space that shimmered like the surface of a great body of water.
Grell gestured. ‘The portal. Built to your exact specifications.’
‘Now it needs only to be programmed to the correct coordinates,’ said the Master.
As they spoke, Thomas gazed through another viewing panel. A vast fleet could be seen that stretched for miles in orbit above a green and yellow planet. Great space stations wheeled slowly in the stratosphere; shuttle craft and supply rockets zipped to and from the world below.
‘Ships that sail the cosmos!’ Thomas gasped. ‘A great celestial armada!’
‘Thomas,’ Peri tried to calm him down but the young astronomer could not contain himself.
Setting at the edge of the planet was an angry sun that seethed with wild bursts of solar flare. Beyond was the bright pattern of the cosmos: stars, galaxies, gas clouds.
‘Look at the stars!’ Thomas exclaimed in wonder. ‘They go on and on! They are not fixed in their spheres as we thought.’
‘The savages from your new territory are quite backward, as you can see,’ the Master explained. ‘Once I have finished with them you might like to keep them as zoological exhibits. Or exotic curiosities. Is there an examination facility I could use?’
The Commander gestured to Lex.
‘Provide all that he requires,’ he ordered her, then turned back to the Master. ‘Will your excellence join us on the bridge later?’
The Master nodded and they were led away to a transport tube that whisked them away to another part of the ship. They arrived at a gantry that crossed over a great botanical garden.
‘It is a short distance to zoology from here,’ Lex informed the Master.
As they walked, they could see space beyond the lush flora around them. The Master turned to the Cassiopeian.
‘You are responsible for conserving examples of your home planet’s life?’
‘I am one of the Guardians, yes,’ she replied.
‘You see, Peri? A fellow ecologist.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Peri protested. ‘What’s going on?’
The Master pointed at the boiling sun in the sky. ‘This star is about to go supernova. All life in this solar system will soon be obliterated. I contacted the Cassiopeians and instructed them on the construction of a great interstellar transportation portal so that enough of them might get away.’
Lex nodded grimly. The ‘Great Selection’ had begun once it had been revealed to the Cassiopeians that some of their race might escape the coming conflagration. It was a harsh new creed that twisted all that Lex had learnt and cherished. A system of control that ensured that the elite would be saved whilst the masses perished was cynically dubbed enhanced natural selection. The desperate craving for survival had corrupted their culture: their civilisation had descended into barbarism.
They passed into a corridor flanked by a series of chambers containing animals, an astonishing bestiary of creatures scarcely vigilant of the new exhibits come to join them. Lex showed them to a room with a variety of cages and examination tables. She summoned two technicians.
‘This great Mothership of the Cassiopeians will preserve their flora and fauna until they reach their new world,’ the Master went on. ‘Yes, I offered them a fertile planet to colonise. Your Earth.’
‘What?’ Thomas looked incredulous.
‘Don’t look so shocked, young man. After all, is your nation not about to embark upon the colonisation of a new world? And from our discussions in the School of Night, Doctor Dee appears to be one of the foremost advocates of this new imperialism.’
‘Er, well, yes,’ Thomas agreed. ‘He has directed his skill in navigation to aid many of our explorers of the Americas. And he does assert our rights to settle in these new lands.’
‘Well, there you have it,’ the Master reasoned. ‘A certain justice, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I… I don’t understand,’ Thomas replied.
The Master turned to Guardian Lex. ‘The inhabitants of Earth are a barbaric race, fierce and stubborn,’ he told her. ‘Mercy is quite wasted on them. But there are many ways to subjugate them. Ah yes, time is a continuum of power, a struggle for survival. The endless domination of one force over another. Peri understands this, don’t you, my dear? That enslavement and genocide are all part of what we call progress.’
As he glared at Peri, she turned from him. Thomas could not comprehend why she did not defy the Master’s words.
‘But Peri shows that the establishment of colonies in new lands need not mean subjugation of the native peoples,’ Thomas insisted.
‘Does she?’ retorted the Master with a wry grin.
‘Why yes, she is an American from the future! An example of how developed her people are after four hundred years of colonisation. Might we not thrive as well if occupied by an advanced civilisation?’
The Master broke into a cruel laugh. ‘I think we’ll start with the male,’ he said, gesturing to Lex and the technicians. ‘Get him on that examination table.’
They grabbed Thomas and secured him. The Master took out a lacquered wooden box.
‘Now, Peri,’ he said, carefully picking out a writhing creature and holding in front Thomas’s terrified visage. ‘Why don’t you tell your friend here what happened to the natives of your land?’
Dee and the Doctor walked down to the river and found a waterman who rowed them up to the City. He set them down on a wharf by the Fishmonger’s Hall and they walked up towards Eastcheap. The Doctor noticed that at times passers-by would stop and stare, not at himself, but at Dee. By a draper’s stall on Candlewick Street a mother pulled her child to her as they passed and muttered a prayer.
‘The fame I have acquired by my art hath caused many an ignorant soul to be fearful of me,’ Dee explained wearily.
But by then they had come to the London Stone, a rough pillar hewn from limestone with iron bars fixed to its base.
‘Some say it is a Roman relic,’ Dee said, and then in a darker tone added: ‘others, that it is an ancient altar of the Druids.’
‘Well, you know,’ the Doctor told him, ‘obelisks and stone circles are quite often old navigation signals for time travellers.’
‘I knew it,’ Dee muttered.
They approached the Stone, and the Doctor busied himself by prodding at it. Dee looked around warily. Bystanders had already started to take note of the well-known alchemist and his gaudy familiar.
‘Chameleon circuit,’ the Doctor noted.
‘What?’ Dee asked.
‘The Master has materialised his TARDIS around the London Stone and used his chameleon circuit to make it look like the obelisk. I just need to find the door.’
A crowd had begun to form around them. The Doctor pulled out a silver object from his pocket.
‘What on Earth is that, sir?’ asked Dee.
‘Multi-dimensional skeleton key. Now, the lock should be somewhere here…’ He continued to tap against the surface of the Stone.
‘Whatever it is you are doing,’ Dee implored, ‘pray be quick about it.’
‘That’s the one who meddles in magic,’ someone called out and pointed. ‘What’s he up to now?’
‘The devil’s work, no doubt,’ came a hoarse reply.
The mob had begun to get restless.
‘It’s all right,’ the Doctor assured Dee. ‘I think I’ve got it… Yes—’
With that the door sprang open, and the Doctor disappeared inside. The mob gasped in collective astonishment.
‘He made that man vanish into thin air!’ someone shouted.
Dee tried to follow the Doctor but the door had closed once more. He turned and gave an apologetic shrug to his outraged audience.
‘Sorcerer!’ a woman screamed.
They closed in on him. Dee turned back and banged his fist against the Stone. He could feel them at his back, ready to tear him to pieces, when suddenly the door gave once more and he tumbled within.
‘Oh dear,’ he sighed as he was safely inside. ‘This isn’t going to do my reputation any good at all.’
‘Isn’t the effect of this creature fascinating?’ the Master asked Peri, who was now stretched out on the examination table whilst Thomas raved and ranted in one of the cages.
‘It is a pleasure parasite, quaintly known as an incubus to those natural philosophers of the School of Night. Once it infests its subject, it sucks upon the particular desires and fixations of the host’s body. And as it feeds it stimulates the appetite. I’ve implanted one in Doctor Dee, who is quite driven by his yearning for hidden knowledge. This one,’ he pointed at the young man who drooled and ripped at his own doublet, ‘has baser feelings, I think. I do believe he is quite entranced by your helpless form, Peri.’
‘You’re a monster!’ she called out.
‘This tedious moral authority of yours,’ the Master sneered. ‘Your poor young friend was quite taken in by this dream of the Americas that you represent. That lie perpetuated by a land built on slavery and genocide. Now all he feels is honest lust.’
Peri watched Thomas struggle, panting and grabbing at the bars. She recalled how he had swallowed that dreadful creature that now possessed him, the frenzied look of horror that so soon turned to one of bestial rapture. Now his face was an ugly grimace of need. His desperate passion seemed much like hatred. Though in his eyes she saw some flicker of conscience, she was sure of it. Something that peeped out in despair from a malevolent mask.
The Master turned to Guardian Lex. ‘You’ll find humans easy to manipulate,’ he told her.
Lex nodded deferentially, hiding her disgust at what she was witnessing. This was the type of gratuitous animal experimentation that she deplored. So much of scientific practice had degenerated since the Great Selection. And she knew that all of the plans for the great exodus from Cassiopeia would also have terrible consequences. The entire ecosystem of the colonised planet would be laid waste. She had seen secret reports on the estimated devastation of the human species by contamination and disease and the suitability of survivors for forced labour. She looked away and checked a relayed report on the impending supernova from the ship’s bridge.
SOLAR DENSITY NOW APPROACHING CRITICAL MASS, it announced.
‘The fleet will be preparing to enter the interstellar transportation gate soon, sir,’ she told the Master.
‘Yes, well this won’t take long,’ he said as he approached the cage.
Thomas howled.
‘How does it feel to be a savage?’ the Master taunted him.
‘Please,’ begged Peri. ‘Please stop this.’
‘By all means,’ he agreed and took out a probe. ‘I can draw the incubus out by using the correct frequency.’
He aimed the device at the cage and a faint oscillation could be felt in the air around them. Thomas doubled up in a sudden seizure, his mouth wide in a rasping growl.
‘One has to be careful,’ the Master observed, putting the probe down and taking up a long forked implement. ‘Once agitated like this the incubus goes on the attack.’
As Thomas retched the slug-like thing out onto the floor of the examination room, it bristled and hissed, ready to strike out. The Master swiftly caught it with the forked prongs and held it up.
‘Shh,’ he implored, and the creature seemed to give out a little sigh. ‘That’s it, yes. It will calm itself once it knows it is to feed upon a host once more. Now it’s your turn Peri.’
She flinched as he gently placed the incubus on her neck. She felt its cold slime as it moved slowly up towards her face.
Lex watched the display that charted the death of her sun.
SOLAR DENSITY INCREASING. THERMAL NEUTRINO LEVELS DETECTED.
The countdown to supernova had begun.
Once the Doctor had replaced the mercury in the fluid links of the Master’s TARDIS, he ran a quick systems check on its console.
‘Not in such bad shape, really. Have to realign the temporal stabilisers but that shouldn’t take too long. In the meantime let’s power up the astral map.’
A holographic cartogram of the near cosmos was projected before them. Dee gazed at the seemingly solid images of stars and planets that swam before his eyes.
‘Oh, to have such star charts,’ he mooned.
‘Look,’ said the Doctor, dragging the control to focus in on the Cassiopeia system. ‘Here’s our interstellar transportation portal. See that flicker there? Now, if I just home in on whatever is operating it… There! That’s where we’re headed. Now, we’re looking at a star system many light years away, so we’re looking at something that happened many years ago. So we’ll have to travel through time as well as space.’
The Doctor set the controls and the TARDIS started up. Dee looked around him in utter incomprehension, trying to adjust to the fact that the space they inhabited was so much larger than the obelisk they had gained entry to.
‘The Master said that you would not give me knowledge of certain things,’ he said. ‘You are forbidden to, are you not?’
‘The High Council of the Time Lords are a bit fussy. And they’ve never trusted me.’
‘Time Lords?’
‘Yes, the noble order I belong to, for my sins. We’re not supposed to interfere with history. Only to set it right.’
‘So you will be gone to another time after this? And I will be left in the darkness.’
‘My dear fellow,’ the Doctor urged, as much to himself. ‘We must not give in to the black moods of melancholy.’
They materialised by a control point in the Mothership. The Doctor spied his own TARDIS close by.
‘There she is,’ he said. ‘Dear old girl. Now, the portal’s guidance systems should be here somewhere.’
‘What are these?’ Dee asked, pointing at a row a large capsule-shaped objects.
‘They look like life pods, part of the ship’s evacuation system. No, this is what we want,’ said the Doctor indicating a control panel. ‘Hmm…’ He examined it. ‘I see they’re using a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. Well, that would make sense. Just as well I brought this.’ He pulled a small metal box from his pocket.
‘What is it?’ asked Dee.
‘Portable randomiser. They want to travel to your solar system, at your point in history, well, we can send them somewhere else.’
Peri could see the head of the incubus out of the corner of her eye as it undulated over the line of her jaw onto her cheek, its suckers pulling at her flesh as it moved, the tail of it flicking against her throat.
‘This is the really interesting part,’ said the Master as he watched her struggle against the straps that held her to the examination table. ‘The point at which resistance becomes acceptance.’
Peri felt all of her responses to the thing begin to change. Its once foul odour now an intoxicating scent, its slimy feelers finding nerve points to soothe and caress. As the head of the incubus reared up in front of one eye, she saw the surface of its skin mottle in hypnotic patterns.
‘It seeks out your pleasure,’ the Master explained with an ugly laugh. ‘It wants you to like it.’
Peri knew that she had to fight against a growing sense of wellbeing. She tried to hold back the curious wave of pleasure that rushed through her, pulling her wrists against their bonds, making the straps dig into her, to remind herself of pain and discomfort.
A new status report come on screen:
SOLAR CRITICAL MASS NOW IMMINENT. INTERSTELLAR TRANSPORTATION PORTAL ACTIVATED.
‘Sir,’ said Lex.
‘Wait,’ the Master insisted. ‘This shouldn’t take long. What’s strange is how close disgust and delight are in the human species.’
‘But your presence is required on the bridge, sir. The fleet is approaching the portal.’
‘Oh, very well,’ the Master sighed. ‘All work and no play. I’ll see you later, Peri.’
She was only dimly aware of him leaving, escorted by the technicians. Now she was ready to give in to the incubus. It already seemed part of her. She was possessed by a lonely yearning for the parasite, a hunger for the demon familiar. As it slithered against her mouth, she wetted her lips, ready to ingest it. For a moment she savoured its monstrous kiss. Then came a ghastly shriek and she was overcome by a suffocating terror. She felt a sudden and violent wrenching, as if her flesh was being torn from her face.
The Mothership had turned slowly from its orbit and taken its place as the lead craft of the Cassiopeian armada which now manoeuvred into formation at the mouth of the interstellar transportation portal. On the bridge, Supreme Commander Grell observed the immense area of space that rippled before them. All around its edge were satellites, their winking navigation lights marking out its vast circumference.
‘Fleet on course, sir,’ announced his first officer.
‘And how close are we to supernova?’ asked Grell.
‘Neutrino levels now at optimum. We’ve detected an iron core forming at the heart of the sun. Solar mass will soon reach critical. We are entering the stellar collapse phase.’
‘Check fleet positions,’ Grell ordered. ‘Prepare to enter portal. Confirm jump coordinates with all pilots.’
The Master entered the bridge.
‘The portal is ready?’ he asked. ‘Have you set the time and space coordinates I gave you?’
‘Yes,’ replied Grell.’
‘Then you should arrive in a high orbit above planet Earth. In their primitive superstition, the natives will take your landing parties to be spirits or angels. Most of their religions have a strong apocalyptic element. You might find it useful to exploit that.’
An alarm sounded.
‘What is it?’ demanded Grell.
‘Something strange has happened, sir,’ the first officer announced. ‘Interstellar portal controls have been reset.’
‘What!’ Grell thundered.
‘Sensors indicate that someone has put our guidance system on manual override.’
The Supreme Commander turned to the Master, who nodded to himself.
‘I think an old friend has dropped in. Take me back to the control room. Have a couple of guards escort us.’
The incubus seemed to hover above her face. Peri frowned, conscious once more of how disgusting it was. It squirmed as it was held in a pair of large forceps. Guardian Lex had pulled it off her face just in time.
‘Ugh.’ Peri nearly retched, her sense of taste and smell now keenly repelled by the putrescence of the thing.
But as Lex put it in a large specimen jar and sealed it, Peri realised that what made her really feel sick was the dim memory of how fond she had been of the loathsome creature. Lex then began to undo her restraints.
‘You’re letting us go?’ asked Peri.
‘The Master said you were an ecologist. Is that true?’
‘Just a student but, yeah, I guess.’
‘Then you’ll know how I feel about what’s being done here.’
Lex unlocked the cage and Thomas stumbled out, bewildered.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
As Peri stood up, she noticed the probe that the Master had left behind. The device he had used to extract the incubus from Thomas.
‘What do you remember?’ she asked him.
‘A horrible dream.’ Thomas rubbed at his face. ‘I remember the Master saying something about the savages of America. Then I became a savage myself.’
‘Come on, quickly,’ Lex beckoned them to leave. ‘There’s some sort of security alert.’
Thomas adjusted his clothes and as he did so he flushed with embarrassment.
‘Perpugilliam, I have an awful remembrance of sinfulness,’ he told her.
‘Try not to worry about it,’ she replied.
‘A monstrous vision that I became vile and base.’ His voice was heavy with guilt.
‘Let’s change the subject, OK?’
‘Very well, then. The Master bade you tell me something. What will happen to the savages of America?’
‘It turned out they weren’t the savages, Tommy. We were.’
‘Who?’
‘The colonists,’ she replied and caught Lex’s eye. ‘Can you take us to the TARDIS?’ she went on.
‘The TARDIS?’ asked Lex.
‘Yeah, you know, that blue vehicle we arrived in.’
The Doctor installed the portable randomiser into the portal controls.
‘This is a mathematical device?’ asked Dee.
‘Yes, I suppose so. I used to have one in my TARDIS. If I wanted to make sure that no one knew where I was headed, it generated a random destination. With this one, I’ve adapted it with a failsafe key.’ The Doctor reached into his pocket.
Dee frowned. ‘But if one following you was able to leap ahead in time,’ he reasoned, ‘then they might predict where you are going to arrive.’
‘Well, yes. It is always hard to know any process is truly random.’
‘Surely, in theory, all events in the universe could be predetermined.’
‘Yes, yes, perhaps. Good grief, man, I’m only trying to explain how this thing works in practice. I’m aware that determinists believe that randomness doesn’t exist in theory.’
‘And they are right, sir. The universe is not left to chance by divinity,’ Dee insisted.
‘You know, I had an argument with Einstein that was just like this, and he was as stubborn as you are.’ The Doctor held out his hand. He opened his palm to reveal two cubes. ‘That’s when I decided to fashion the failsafe key like this.’
Dee peered at the objects in the Doctor’s hand. ‘A pair of dice?’
‘Yes, rather clever, don’t you think? If anything goes wrong with the randomiser, simply roll those two and a final element of chance is introduced into the process. Here, you’d better keep hold of them.’
‘Very well, but your reasoning is still flawed.’
‘Look, I’ve used a randomiser before. It always seemed to work.’
‘Well, it seems to me that you scarcely know how all of these devices of yours work. It’s as if you’ve merely inherited a box of tricks.’
‘That’s hardly fair!’
Their argument had become so heated that they didn’t notice the Master enter the control room, followed by Grell and two guards.
‘I don’t see why you’re being so critical,’ the Doctor protested.
‘It is a simple matter of mathematics, sir. This thing is not truly random, merely unpredictable.’
‘Unpredictable, yes. I’ll agree to that. I’m the soul of unpredictability.’
‘Yes,’ the Master boomed, making them start at the sound of his voice. ‘You’re so proud of that, aren’t you, Doctor? You like to think of yourself as eccentric and capricious, but you are so boringly conventional. I suspected that you would find and fix my TARDIS. And I knew that, in your arrogance, you would imagine that you were one step ahead of me. Now, stand away from those controls.’
Grell’s guards covered them as the Master approached the panel.
‘Indeed,’ Dee sighed bitterly. ‘The Master hath the greater intelligence.’
‘Now Doctor, I’ve a special fate for you.’ The Master turned to Grell. ‘Prepare one of the escape pods for this saboteur. And have it launch away from planetary orbit.’
‘That will send it towards the supernova,’ said Grell.
‘Exactly. Even you will not escape such a conflagration, Doctor. Once and for all your destruction is assured.’
The guards escorted the Doctor to an escape pod. The hatch hissed open.
‘Let me just disconnect this randomiser and I’ll come and dispatch you myself. Wait.’ The Master checked the panel once more. ‘There’s a failsafe key. Where is it, Doctor?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘It’s a remote manual device, but your hands are empty. So…’ The Master turned to Dee, noting his clenched fist. ‘Give it to me.’ He approached Dee with an outstretched palm, staring intently at him. ‘Oh yes, you will hand it over. Think of what I can give you in return.’
‘Roll the dice!’ called the Doctor.
‘A suitably florid metaphor. But no,’ said the Master softly. ‘Take no heed of him. You took him for a fool at first, and you were right. No, listen to me. Listen to what I can tell you.’
Dee struggled against the incubus that had come alive inside once more of him, but an unconscious will began to take hold.
‘All the secrets of alchemy and metaphysics. The key to magic numbers and sacred geometry. The Hieroglyphic Monad decoded, the Grand Unified Theory of the universe,’ the Master promised. ‘All yours.’
Dee tried to control the hand that held the dice but it made a quivering gesture of its own, reaching out to the Master.
Then an oscillating whine filled the air. The Master frowned.
‘Peri!’ shouted the Doctor as he spied his assistant pointing something at Dee.
It was the probe that the Master had left in the examination room.
Dee’s face flushed purple and his breath came in heaving sobs that wracked his frame. In a violent seizure, he bent forward and spewed the incubus out.
‘No!’ cried the Master as the creature that squealed and flared up in front of him now leapt at his face.
Dee opened his hand and the dice clattered onto the floor.
‘Guidance systems are now locked onto a chance setting,’ said the Doctor as he broke free from the guards and came across to where his adversary lay. He took his TARDIS keys from the Master, who now grabbed at the furious incubus that attacked his face.
‘See to the Master!’ Grell ordered as the Doctor helped Dee and led Peri and Thomas to his own time machine.
‘If you’ll excuse us,’ he said as he unlocked his TARDIS and hustled everybody inside.
‘Wait!’ Grell called after them.
The Doctor closed the door behind him and the TARDIS dematerialised.
‘Electron degeneracy pressure now at maximum,’ the first officer announced. ‘Stellar mass now confirmed unstable. Our sun is about to enter its collapse phase. Commence final approach to interstellar transportation portal.’
‘But the coordinates have not been corrected,’ observed the navigator as she checked the controls. ‘They appear to be fixed on an uncertain setting.’
‘What do we do, sir?’ the first officer asked as his commander appeared on the flight deck.
‘There’s no time to reset our course,’ Grell announced grimly. ‘We’ll have to take our chances.’
Lex looked back to see the last sunset over her home planet. She wept as she watched the darkening beauty of a dying world, then felt a surge of power as the Mothership was hurled into the unknown.
With a grinding lurch the TARDIS came to a halt.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Peri.
‘I hate it when someone else has been fiddling my controls! What’s he done now?’ The Doctor began to try a sequence of buttons on the console.
Peri looked on impatiently. ‘And where are we?’ she demanded.
‘Oh dear.’ The Doctor flicked on a monitor screen above. ‘The Master seems to have left some sort of steering lock on. We’ve only managed to materialise into the space outside the fleet. See? There they go.’
He pointed at the screen. The Cassiopeian armada was streaming through the transportation gate, each ship winking out of visibility as it crossed the threshold.
‘Where will they go?’ Peri wondered.
‘Who knows?’ There are many myths of a lost fleet of starships roaming this galaxy. This might have been the beginning of them. Right,’ the Doctor said as he flicked a switch. ‘That should get us back to London in 1572.’
Nothing happened.
As the TARDIS slowly drifted in space the dying sun came into view. The Doctor pointed up to it and turned to Dee and Thomas.
‘Now, this is really interesting,’ he told them. ‘Not every day you get to witness a supernova. This star has achieved a critical mass where it cannot support its own weight. It’s just about to collapse.’
‘Doctor,’ Peri said. ‘Get us out of here.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her as he punched in a familiar sequence. ‘The Fast Return Switch. That’ll get us back to where we last were.’
‘You say this star is about to fall in on itself?’ Dee asked, gazing at the screen.
‘Yes,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Then, suddenly, it will sort of bounce back, as the force collapsing meets its core energy.’
‘Then what happens?’
‘A terrific explosion. When a supernova detonates, it can be seen for millions of light years.’
‘An apocalypse,’ Dee whispered.
‘Yes. A great destructive force. But a creative one, also. New stars will form from the vast debris of this holocaust. It is how the universe regenerates itself. It’s like a great alchemist’s crucible, transmuting elements, hurling great energies across the cosmos.’
‘Doctor,’ Peri sounded impatient.
‘Yes, yes. Don’t worry. The Fast Return Switch has been activated.’
Nothing happened again.
‘Ah,’ he admitted. ‘Now we really are in trouble.’
All stared at the screen now as the star began to darken and turn in on itself, its very matter crushed as elemental particles fused and split at its core. A final and terrifying twilight.
‘Now a god doth close its eye,’ Dee gasped.
‘This is it,’ said Peri.
She felt Thomas’s fingers reaching for hers.
‘Might I offer this unworthy hand,’ he murmured.
‘What? Oh, yeah,’ she replied and grabbed hold of it.
‘Only one thing for it,’ the Doctor told them. ‘A percussive intervention.’
‘A what?’ asked Peri.
‘This,’ he explained, raising a fist and giving the controls a good thump.
There was a burst of brightness as the fire of a billion suns was unleashed in an instant. A blinding white light flooded everything. Energy, matter, information, all blanked out into nothing.
Doctor Dee felt his mind clear. He felt at last purged of the need for dark wisdom and in place of that terrible hunger a marvellous emptiness. A brightness. This was revelation, he thought. Illumination. Light, yes, light was all. The Creator’s first command and his last. Yes, light, the pureness of it. He had at last joined the Elect. Not the School of Night, no, the School of Light! The scroll was now unrolled and he saw at once its parchment bare. He knew everything now. And nothing. He had read the blank page of the universe.
Then slowly, as he blinked his eyes open, the interior of the TARDIS began to come back into focus. No, he thought, not yet. But it was too late. His mind had already started to fill with the tedious details of existence and he felt despair at its complexity. That gnawing hunger for arcane knowledge came back to him. He noticed once more that a TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside. How could his feeble mind ever explain such things?
‘We made it!’ Peri called out.
‘Good girl,’ said the Doctor, patting the console.
It was dusk when they arrived back at Dee’s house. The whole of London was in a clamour at the bright new star now seen burning in the heavens.
‘The appearance of this supernova is one of the most important events in the history of astronomy,’ the Doctor told them. ‘It will challenge once and for all the old beliefs and the ancient models of the universe. It can no longer be seen as an unchanging celestial realm, with the stars set in fixed spheres.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dee. ‘But it will make some fearful. It is the end of the old order and stability in the cosmos.’
‘You and Thomas are part of that change, you know. Your observations of this phenomenon will be very important.’
‘Yes, yes. We must start to make measurements. Thomas…’ Dee turned to address his pupil, but he had gone.
‘I think Thomas and Peri are saying their goodbyes,’ the Doctor suggested.
‘Must you go so soon?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ replied the Doctor.
‘But you could settle awhile and take some time to study. With my library, observatory and laboratory at your disposal, think of what you could gain from a sustained period of learning and reflection? You always seem to be rushing about in time and space, never taking time to properly understand the universe around you.’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘It is tempting. But it’s not my way, thank you. I trust you have recovered from your ordeal.’
‘I fear that I will always be afflicted by a troublesome hankering after dangerous wisdom. I’m simply tempted to learn more than I should, I know that. And this brief adventure has not helped. Of course, it will seem like a dream in a matter of days; certainly no one would believe it if I told the tale. So, I will continue to feel out of my time, somehow belonging to a different era.’
‘Hmm,’ the Doctor pondered. ‘You are much like a Time Lord in many ways.’
‘And you sir,’ Dee rejoined, ‘are much like a magician.’
‘Doctor,’ the Doctor held out his hand.
‘Doctor,’ Dee replied as he shook it.
‘I wish that I could come with you to your time,’ said Thomas to Peri.
They walked together along a pathway down to the river.
‘Well, you’d love Caltech.’
‘It doth truly sound like paradise.’
‘Yeah, a geek’s paradise.’
‘A geek? What is a geek?’
Peri smiled. ‘It’s what we call people of great intelligence in our world.’
‘Oh, how I would love to be a geek.’
‘Well, Tommy, I think you already are. But you belong here. You’re important for your own time. Your theories and experiments might change the way people think.’
They stopped by the water’s edge.
‘Perpugillium,’ Thomas turned to face her. ‘I must apologise for my behaviour when I was in that cage. What must you think of me?’
‘Hey, Tommy, you couldn’t help yourself, right?’
‘But don’t you see? That very beastliness is part of my true nature.’
‘Look, a guy once said: “We are all of us in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars.”’
‘A wise man. But what if the Master is right? That progress brings with it greater destruction and every new craft or intelligence merely increases our capacity to cause suffering.’
‘Then we have to make sure that we work against that. That’s what I’m trying to work on with my studies.’
‘This ecology you spoke of with the Cassiopeian? Forgive me, I know not this discipline.’
‘Sure you do. It’s like the scientific study of the interactions among organisms and their environment. And how we can hold on to the balance between them.’
‘That sounds like the essence of all natural philosophy.’
‘Yeah, I think it is. And it’s just as important to look up at the stars. Especially our new friend here.’
She pointed to the bright body that hung low in the darkening sky.
‘Yes,’ Thomas agreed. ‘I must assemble our instruments to determine the parallax of that star, to prove it is beyond the planetary spheres. Otherwise some might take it to be a comet or a meteor.’
‘Now, do me a favour, Tommy,’ said Peri. ‘Don’t go talking about travelling through space or witnessing a supernova close up, will you?’
‘Only if I want to be taken for a madman. No, I will pretend I had my feet on the ground the whole time.’
‘And forget the whole thing?’
‘Not you, Perpugilliam. How could I forget you?’ He nodded up to the heavens. ‘Every time I look at the stars, I’ll think of you.’
Peri leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Goodbye, Tommy,’ she said and turned to walk back to the house and the waiting TARDIS.
‘A restless spirit,’ said the Doctor as he checked the controls of the TARDIS, ‘with a sense of knowledge beyond his scope. Having seen too much yet not enough.’
‘Doctor Dee?’ asked Peri.
‘Yes.’
‘Sounds like another doctor I could mention. ’
‘I suppose we did have a few things in common. I’ve a feeling I’ve not seen the last of him. You seemed to get on well with that young astronomer.’
‘Yeah, he was kind of sweet.’ She shrugged. ‘For a geek.’
‘Then you might be interested in this.’ The Doctor activated a viewing screen.
There was an image of a diagram with the Sun at its centre and a series of concentric circles showing the orbits of the planets. Outside this solar system was a representation of the myriad stars beyond.
‘It’s A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes, published by Thomas Digges in 1576, four years after you met him. It was the first time in English that anyone had demonstrated in print the new Copernican, heliocentric, world view.’
‘Wow, when it was still seen as heresy.’
‘Yes. And not only that. Thomas seems to be the first person on Earth to postulate an infinite universe, that stars were not merely fixed to an outer sphere but went on and on. He’s sometimes forgotten in the history of science, but an astronomer from your time said: “Digges’ original contribution to cosmology consisted of dismantling the starry sphere and scattering the stars throughout endless space.”’
‘Well how about that, Tommy? That’s pretty cool.’
‘It is rather good, isn’t it? And, here, this is what he said himself.’
The Doctor pointed to an inscription on the diagram beyond the outer rim of the solar system. Peri read it out loud:
‘This orb of stars fixed infinitely up extends itself in altitude spherically, and therefore immovable the palace of felicity garnished with perpetual shining glorious lights innumerable, far excelling over sun both in quantity and quality the very court of celestial angels, devoid of grief and replenished with perfect endless joy, a habitacle for the elect.’
Peri felt her eyes brim with tears.
‘There’s another inscription,’ the Doctor added. ‘Right here at the bottom. No one’s really been quite sure of its significance. Until now. It reads: Per Pugilliam Pulvis Sidereus. It means—’
‘I got it,’ Peri smiled. ‘I learned pretty good Latin studying botany, you know. It means: “by a handful of stardust”.’